These sorts of machines are quite useful for field servicing equipment that doesn’t have it’s own display. It doesn’t take much processing power to display a settings list, or flash the firmware of a machine… and being small is a big advantage when you have to haul it around along with a bag of tools.

The funny thing is people in the West often like to say the Crusoe failed. But it didn't - in Japan it was highly successful and quite a substantial number of different manufacturers used it, and whilst Western Crusoe-based machines do tend to be rare and hard to find, you can still find tonnes of different options in Japan.

The VAIO silver and lilac colour scheme and high-quality finish was a breath of fresh air in a boring world of grey laptops - and it still looks striking today. I had one of the early magnesium VAIO 505 laptops and loved it to bits. Only my ThinkPad came close in the amount of work it did and abuse it took than that little machine.

There were reports the Transmeta CPU would benchmark up to 20% faster on the second run through as the CPU adapted it's x86 emulation. I tested this with Quake on my U1 and sure enough the frame rate improved the second time. I love the black U3, always wanted one.

Funnily enough, the form factor isn't exactly dead. GPD made the Win Max and that gaming laptop looks quite similar to the PCG-U1. The Win 1 and Win 2 are a bit nicer to type on when held in both hands because they're smaller.

That's funny, just recently I was watching a Cathode Ray Dude video about a similar Sony laptop with an integrated camcorder, also making use of the Crusoe CPU. The funny thing is, despite the whole point of that laptop being the camcorder functionality, the CPU was too weak to actually handle video encode which held it back quite a bit. Interesting to see this one also using it.

I bought a U3 when I was in high school, it cost me most of my savings. I used it for a few months, but ended up selling it because it wasn't fast enough for what I wanted to do. Got my money back when I sold it and was happy to have experienced that little machine's uniqueness.

You mentioned how hard those software and driver disks are to find, I really hope you imaged those you have there and uploaded them to the Internet archive

I remember being able to estimate a CPU's clock speed by how many FPS that 'flying windows' screensaver ran at. 👍😆

I owned a PCG-U3 back in the day. This series was something else entirely. Exotic, extremely cute, with a crazy good display. I miss the times when such creativity was allowed. Thank you for this review which took me back !

That CPU has some sorcery built into it, the more you run the same stuff the more it adapts and gets better at it, all while consuming much less power since it has less transistors. Having grown up only seeing Intel and AMD it is very interesting to me seeing other x86 CPUs like the Cyrix, Transmeta and VIA. I suspect the same would be true for younger people and graphic card manufacturers.

This is what I miss the most from the late 90s/early 00s... Originality. I imagine having a desing like that, with a modern hardware, that would be dope

I was surprised to hear no mention of Linus Torvalds, the most famous employee of Transmeta. I still remember him being quoted as having said: "When we're done you're going to want one."

Yes those were great times for micro laptops. I remember Casio Fiva also using similar type low-power CPUs. But my favourite will always be Fujitsu mini laptops, they don’t have that sticky rubber coatings or the crack screen like Sony laptops after prolonged storage.

oh my, what memories! I had a U1 when I used to travel to Japan often for work between 2001-2011. I bought a U1, and then later a U50 and later still a UX50 all when they were new during my years working over there. As much as I loved them for their beyond cool gadget factor, the practicalities of actually using them always eventually came to the fore, and I'd move back to using a more normal laptop. I remember sitting in an office using the U1 to write my reports to my boss. My colleagues would take great pleasure on teasing me over just how tiny my little machine was (ahem).... I remember a colleague sending me an email where he had purposely set the font size as large as he could. When I opened it on the U1, even just a single letter would fill the screen. Everyone thought this was pretty hilarious, and indeed it was :-) I gave soooo much money to Sony (and to Yodobashi Camera) during my years in Japan. Great memories (lighter wallet). Fantastic video, thank you for the memories! I don't have the U1 anymore, I think I sold it to a friend back when it was still quite new. The U50 and UX50 I think I still have somewhere though. No idea if they still work, but I should try!

Another example of amazing consumer technology sold only in Japan. I vaguely remember Transmeta and their Crusoe CPUs.

I love this videos about old and not common computers, great channel!

Used to have something similar in size. It's great for stuffing behind your DM screen for D&D. 😁

6:35 This is how all modern Intel and AMD CPUs work like as well. Internally they are RISC, but they have an x86 front-end.

You'd appreciate a thumbs up would you? Well your down right getting one. This channel is quickly becoming my favourite for retro tech up there with LGR and Techmoan.

Oh! A friend of mine bought one in Japan. At its time, it was amazing to see such small laptop running WinXP and with so many options!

In Japan in the 2000s, notebook PCs with a Crusoe were common, so I was surprised to find that they were not common in other countries.

I am certainly glad there's companies out there that still try and make these things like GPD the packet three has been awesome brings back memories of the various miniature devices I saw along the way that I could never afford.

I wanted to do a video on the Transmeta processors as I've always been obsessed with them. But plans to make a video didn't pan out. Great video!

I remember when these Sub notebooks came out. I wanted one SO BAD! The Toshiba Libretto and Sony Vaio P series were so cool! I loved anything with a tiny color LCD and full keyboard like the the LG Phenom which ran win CE. I ended up scoring a like new HP Omnibook 800 Subnotebook and a Fujitsu Stylistic 2300 tablet pc off ebay in the early 2000's that I still have in my collection.

Japanese tech in the 80s and 90s was the best part of our timeline.

The Transmeta Crusoe chips. I remember the hype for them before they were released. I was working as a service supervisor & later service manager of a laptop repair depo in the 2000's and I remember talking to several of our corporate clients about the Transmeta chips. The low power & battery life claims had them interested, especially for companies that a very mobile work force like sales reps as one example but the disappointing performance results quelled much of that interest. IMO the best thing that Transmeta brought to the table is it forced Intel and to a lesser degree AMD to focus more on power saving features in their mobile CPUs. The Pentium 4's power issues also helped this along greatly! It also didn't hurt Transmeta that a number of laptop OEMs in the late 90s and early 2000s had tried to stuff a desktop CPU into a few models of their laptops, usually with less than stellar results. I can still remember the Toshiba Satellite 5005 or 5105 that had a desktop P3 1.13 ghz CPU in it. Sure the laptop was very fast for it's time, but the battery life on it was almost non-existent. The machine ran really hot and had a noisy fan. And if the heatsink wasn't properly cleaned often (which most home users didn't do!) the machine would overheat and either tank performance or shut off entirely. The issue was so bad that I think Toshiba had to extend the warranty on that model for an extra 6-18 months due to how often that happened. That's just one example but there were several others back then. The introduction of the Pentium M really sealed the fate of Transmeta when laptops with those chips were released in 2003. A Pentium M based laptop would easily keep up with a laptop with a mobile P4 CPU running 1000Mhz faster than the Pentium M machine and do it with better battery life! The Pentium M morphed into the Core Solo, then Core Duo and was refined into the desktop/mobile Core 2 Duo & Quad chips that we all know and loved back then.

This is nice! I had a Flybook Dialogue with a 1Ghz Transmeta Crusoe cpu and a few years ago I bought it once again for some retro gaming.

The forthcoming GPD Win Max 2 is effectively the modern equivalent to this, complete with a handheld form factor. Check it out!

I loved the U1 for it's colors and look. It really sings to me and I'd love to have one in a display in my collection. :3

I really enjoy watching your videos. Keep up the great work!

this is back in a time when Sony was trying with their hardware other than their game console. I still have VAIO laptop with Vista. I actually loved it.

Yea those 1.8 ide drives are slower than molasses in a Chicago winter compared to everything else of the period. One can get an msata adapter to replace the old drive if desired.

Hey Colin. Love your videos hope you have a great day!

I've never heard of a Crusoe CPU and MicroDIMM for RAM until now. Thank you Colin I sure learned somethings new here.

Congratulations 🎉 to 300k subs! You've earned it!

VAIO videos are such a delight! I miss them so much.

This was a cool computer that I had never heard of! Thanks for the video!

I love these ultra compact PC form factors. True, working with these is somewhat painful and impossible but to think that we can have a computer the size of a GameBoy always stuck with me.

I worked for Transmeta from 2000 to 2002. It was an exciting time for sure. One thing the CEO pushed was that these systems weren't intended to be desktop replacements. Instead, they were meant as portable companions to a desktop PC, and never meant to be speed demons. Some of the hardware that used the processor was *very* cool though. I'm glad to have been employed there at the time.

Would love to see you repairing the screen on the U3 and maybe seeing if there's upgrades you can do to them.

Sony’s infatuation of the time with the Spider-Man font continues… The fact they have the 4-pin FireWire with a separate DC jack next to it makes me wonder why they didn’t just put the 6-pin connector… it’s about as wide and only slightly taller. Oh well. Very interesting design.

Around 2004 a college professor of mine who also the creator of Kid Pix, has one of these variants of sub laptops from Sony. In the days of iPods and lampshade iMacs, it still exotic to see in the wild.

That powermate Eco looked awesome wow.

I never had such device, never even heard of it, but this video somehow hit me with nostalgia like a truck.

Hey! Just watched Cathode Ray Dude's vid of the Crusoe-based VAIO and here's another one of these. Along with those media-center PCs and all sorts of weird things, VAIO sure was something else.

I had high hopes for that CPU. I remember seeing it used in wearable computers. Big advantage was that it didn't get hot in wearable or portable devices.

Oh wow, I used to have that little gadget back then. It was handy when commuting in train while web browsing.

Another fine video, sir!

I wish we were still building machines like that, or at least with that old Sony industrial design language. I find it so appealing. Great review as usual. Highlight of my morning so far.

I had one of these. The Vaio PCG-U3. It was amazin piece of tech. i still have the original software somewhere. And some pics too.

One thing about computers or computing in general at the time was the innovation and excitement. We rarely see this in the PC world. We also have a lot less peripherals to choose from.

what a charming little PC, thank you for showing it. 😍

The Crusoe was all about moving the instruction scheduling from hardware to software. The idea was that if you aren't lighting up transistors to handle out of order execution in hardware that you might be able to beat it at power consumption in software.

Reminds me of my teeny tiny Sharp Zaurus. It was even smaller and had a touch screen - which compensated a little bit for the terrible "keyboard". I thought it was an amazing bit of technology which worked great as a pocket sized terminal for working in data centres on my regular visits to fix our servers.

wow! glad to see the pcg-u1!! I used to play 'ultima online' with this small pc for easyuo scripting during my bedtime almost 25 years ago!

@1:35 I'm like 90% sure you could invert the mouse click functions using the regular settings. If not Auto Hotkey will definitely work.

I sometimes wonder if the Crusoe would fare better today. With ARM becoming more popular and RISC-V on the horizon, a processor that could run a number of instruction sets might become quite useful.

They were very useful for data entry and calculations. A lab tool or field device.

I've had a few Transmeta machines over the years, a Sony "PictureBook" PCG-C1VN (that I owned, briefly), and a Compaq TC1000 (that was supplied by my work), they both really were hot garbage in performance terms, but battery life was admittedly pretty good (more so on the Compaq which had a much larger battery). They were acceptable performance for light office work which was definitely Compaq's target market, but Sony definitely pushed multimedia uses more, and they really fell flat there. I kinda wish I had tried to buy out the TC1000 when my work retired it, I did grab a later TC1100 which is the same form factor but Intel based.

I love your videos, here from Brazil :)

Sony's VAIO laptops up until like 2013ish or so were some of the most gorgeous laptops ever!

I would recommend posting the drivers somewhere online for archive as I know a lot of other KZfaqrs have had difficulty finding drivers for other Sony products

20 yrs ago, we at work received tiny sony laptops that were touchscreen too. Cool little gadgets that came with a portable floppy drive. The best thing about them was that they were free - donated to our it recycling company

More VAIO Stuff? man, quite I had some flashbacks with the Sony VAIO back in late 2000's.

Hah! I still have the Sony external DVD and CD drives (at 10:04) that I bought with my PCG-Z505. 20+ years old and they still work. Back then, my co-worker bought a PCG-C1VE and he used it for programming. Worked well on his commute too so I heard.

Neat! I have a PCG-U3 I should document.

Wow i totally forgot about the crusoe cpu's, i remember it was a big deal when it launched but never took off.

The Crusoe was very interesting. VLIW wasn't used much in desktop CPUs, but outside of that saw some use. Like in Radeon HD 2000-4000 cards or in a modified form in Intel's X64 Itanium chips. And the possibility to add instruction extensions per update could make them long lived. In theory.

Looks a little smaller, but thicker then the Atari ST Book, with a similar pointer device, though that came out in 1991 and as there were only around 1100 ever made, are hard to find today (but had features that are missing from todays laptops that could and should be useful!). Fascinating little machine here though, I know a few people who would have loved to have one of these back in it’s day.

Thank you for the video.

Slightly later there were also the JVC Mini Note laptops using Intel ultra low voltage variants of the Pentium III. I bought one as a student 2004 and loved it. It already had WiFi and I upgraded it to 512MB. Though you had to compromise on the keyboard, if you got used to it wasn’t that bad. It was king when giving presentations or travel abroad. I used it for years and sold it a couple of years ago to a collector for a 100 bugs while still working including the batteries.

I have the sequel to this, the PCG-U101. Amazing little laptops

And then something like electric dictionary came out, was very popular in 2000s among students. I had one and still keep it, mainly used for the built in dictionary, some simple learning program, videos, songs and some built in simple game. Size about a small notepad maybe 4x6 inches. Damn brings back memories.

I love the chose of music select for the video

Hi Collins, you need to archive this recovery cd's ! Otherwise good video, as always.

I loved my Sony Vaio U101 - the later version of this and with a custom Celeron 600Mhz at the time. Really regretted selling it and was so good for its time.

I bought one of these (PCG-U3) to replace my 400MHz C1 and honestly it wasn't much faster lol. It was smaller though, I do need to fix the hook on it that closes it since it's broke on mine so I have to manually turn off the screen with a program. The scroll wheel was definitely one of my favourite features though, I was disappointed the new Picturebook series didn't have one but I got one of those anyway.

they had so many names for small computer back then, in the mid 2000's we got the UMPC (ultra mobile personal computer) which i think fits all those idea's and with GPD's computer this has made a comeback. so that leaves us with laptops, ultrabooks, and the rest is just a UMPC

This is actually a cool idea, an updated model with swappable mouse and click ports would be neat

great video - I remember reading about these way back in Sony's golden age - ahh memories!

Sony VAIO was a cool ass brand in general. They cranked out some neat gadgets.

It still astounds me just how fast PC tech moved at this time: only 5 years previous to this in 1996 retails stores were still selling 100MHz Pentium 1 machines with as little as 8mb RAM and 1mb VRAM and 500mb HDDs. This thing was a SUBNOTE with specs that were light years away, even with an underpowered CPU for the time. Just unreal.

we came full circle in the end with tablets with socs and keyboards. this is a very cool looking laptop. wonder if parts could be adpated

Really interesting stuff here. The emulation capability of the Crusoe makes me think of what is said about M1 chips from Apple, acording to Anaconda developers, it is believed M1 chips can emulate code instructions from x64 and then translate them to ARM architecture. So story repeats but now it seams that it worked very well.

Very cool. A lot of people might forget that unlike the US, Japan has an excellent rail system where people might find using something like this useful during a commute where physical space is at a premium. It is cool to see companies try these ideas out even if it doesn't pan out. Nowadays we see devices like the Samsung Galaxy Fold series which may be good enough to replace both phone & tablet in one go.

Love the look of that laptop

i absolutely LOVE the design of this machine.

Very good. Nice stuff ok Review congratulaciones

Have you looked into the Sony Vaio UX series. I remember seeing one in a Staples and thinking, "That tiny thing is a full-on computer?!"

The video port isn't specific to these computers. It's called Mini VGA and many apple computers sold between 2001-2005 used it as well. Ive used that sony adapter on an imac g4 and emac, and ive used the apple branded one on a sony picturebook.

The Crusoe's X86 emulation speed bottleneck brings to mind the 68k emulator in the 1st generation Power Macintoshes: a simular speed bottleneck, I think.

I remember all those articles talking about Transmeta processors and how they weren't exactly up to snuff compared to other CPUs but they were great for battery life in highly portable form factors (at the time) and found these Sony machines to be pretty good. I almost bought one despite the high price but I was still firmly in the Pentium camp for all things laptop and Pentium or Athlon on the desktop side of things. Not sure if you're familiar with an old NYC based shop called J&R Computer World but they sold these machines as well as other stuff like imported high cell phones and Palmtops that ran on Intel Pentium III and Core Duo processors (i forget the exact name but they were pretty well known for being unique) as well as the usual tech fare.

I had a Compaq TC1000 with the same CPU. The story I heard was Transmeta expected it to be as fast as an AMD/Intel CPU. However speed sucked with the first yields, but power was low. So instead they marketed it as a low power CPU instead.

With modern internals & bezel-less screen this thing would rock today ! 😀

Is that special video adapter port not just mini-VGA? I have an old iBook that uses that for video out, the connector looks identical!

5:16 ah yes that small HDD, i remember using HP Elite book back then using that HDD, that's really slow, change it with regular HDD and place it in DVD area using caddy, then its soo much faster

I have a Thinclient based on the Transmeta Crusoe that I use for tinkering around with WinXP programs and as my Winamp music player. I would argue that for its time, the Crusoe was a very good CPU, especially considering how little power it uses. It would have been great if they had survived longer in the market, but in the end Intel copyed many of transmeta's technology and things moved on

This machine reminds me of the Dialogue Flybook which also had a Transmeta processor

Nice video and nice laptop. I hope you can fix it and record it