PCG-VX

PCG-VX in Japanese Presentation PDF

Overview

The Sony VAIO PCG-VX Series is a range of mid-end laptops released by Sony between March and June 2002. It's one of the evolutions of the PCG-XR, released the previous year.

While the XR was offered in many different variants, one of the weak points of the VX was that it wasn't offered with different setups, and the optional were just limited to the RAM, the dual battery, and software.

Very acclaimed for its modern and thin design, its specs were considered the weak point of this laptop series.

In fact, while the competitors (e.g. IBM and Compaq) offered in their laptops one of the best GPUs in the market, the ATI Mobility Radeon, the VX had as only available GPU the Intel 815EM, low-end for 2002, making it "lose" the competition between the high-end laptops.

Analogously, this series was offered just with one CPU, the Intel Pentium, not powerful but very well developed in terms of energy management, making the VX Series one of the best in terms of battery life.

On the other hand, it was very appreciated that it was equipped with many ports (for example: firewire, USB, memory stick) and an external CD/DVD drive was included in the price. It supported Wi/Fi but didn't have Bluetooth, not even as an optional. It was already equipped with productivity software (Office) and also for video, photo, and audio editing (e.g. Photoshop, SonicStage).

For all those reasons, it can be considered a well-made but mid-range laptop.

Detailed Specs

Processor: Mobile Intel Pentium III Processor 850MHz-M

Graphics: Intel 815EM

Display: 14.1-inch, XGA (1024×768) TFT color LCD

Memory: SDRAM micro-DIMM (PC100)

Storage: Ultra ATA/100

Weight: 2 kg

Original OS: Windows XP Professional (models with "P" suffix), Windows XP Home Edition

Daily Usage Today

PCG-VX Series cannot handle modern programs, especially if resource-intensive. However, because they were equipped with Windows XP, some basic web browsing may still be feasible thanks to some modern browsers but still supporting XP.

Thanks also to the big community related to Windows XP, many modern programs still have a "light" version supporting XP.

Preinstalled programs can still be used today for text writing and basic photo, video, or audio editing.