PCG-FX

Product tour from Sony website of the PCG-FX 2001 lineup

Summary

The Sony VAIO PCG-FX are a series of mid and high-range notebooks released by Sony between February 2001 and November 2002.

Evolution of the PCG-F, they were some of the best models of the 2001-2002 lineup, and they have a 14.1" or a 15" XGA TFT display.

Made mostly of brushed aluminum and plastic, in grey and light blue, they were acclaimed upon their release because of their style and portability.

On the other hand, many reviewers complained because of the difficulty in accessing the internal parts, especially the hard drive, so that the less-experienced users were obliged to send the notebook back to the vendor in order to change or swap those parts.

They had one of the most powerful CPUs and GPUs of the market, that made them true replacements to a desktop, keeping them in the same category of the predecessor PCG-F. In fact, they were shipped with many audio and video editing programs, like Adobe Premiere and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge, and also some photo editing applications like Adobe Photoshop Elements.

They were very expensive to buy outside the United States and Japan, because they were imported from those countries, increasing an already very high price (around 1500-2000 US$ in the United States).

The battery quality and duration were very good for those years, and they supported also dual-battery operation.

They were made for two years, the main difference between those was that the 2001 ones had Intel processors, while the 2002 versions had AMD ones.

Sony made many some variations of it, changing the CPUs' models and clock speed.

Detailed Specs

Processor : Celeron 600 MHz, Pentium III 900 MHz, 1 GHz (2001 versions); AMD Duron 800MHz, AMD Athlon 4 1 GHz, AMD Athlon XP 1400+ 1.4 GHz, 1500+ 1.5GHz (2002 versions)

Graphics : Intel 815EM graphics chip with up to 11 MB SDRAM (2001 versions); ATI 3D RAGE Mobility-M1 8 MB SDRAM (2002 versions)

RAM : 32 or 64 MB (expandable respectively to 160 MB and 192 MB, 1999 version); 128 MB SDRAM (expandable to 256 MB, 2000 version)

Display : 14.1" or 15" XGA 1024 x 768 (SXGA 1400 x 1050 for the 2002's top-range) with TFT LCD screen

Storage : 2.5" ATA

Battery : Lithium-Ion battery that supports dual battery operation

Weight : 2.9 kg / 102.2 oz / 6.3 pounds for 14.1", 3.4 kg / 119.9 oz / 7.4 pounds for the 15"

Original OS : Windows XP Home Edition; Windows XP Professional (models with "P" suffix); Windows 2000 Professional (models with "K" suffix)

Daily Usage Today

These devices, due to their specs, cannot handle web browsing or running modern programs today.

Something more can be done with the Windows XP-shipped models, for example basic web browsing, thanks to many modern programs developed for that OS.

They can be used, in all the versions, to write text (they were shipped with Microsoft Office), play old games, or to import, convert, and edit very old photo, video, or audio footages, maybe in order to convert them into a more modern format.

Resources

Sony JP VAIO PCG-FX Series (2001) Presentation Page

Sony VAIO PCG-FX Series User Guide for Windows 2000

Sony VAIO PCG-FX Series User Guide for Windows XP

Sony VAIO PCG-FX100 Series Specifications Sheet

Sony VAIO PCG-FX500 Series Specifications Sheet

Recovery Discs

PCG-FX150 recovery discs are available on the Internet Archive.

PCG-FX401 and PCG-FX405 recovery discs are available on the Internet Archive.

Downloads

Follow our guide to download and install the drivers (as Sony removed Windows 7 drivers and older).

Sources

Sony