In the local classified ads there was a cheap 2009 Sony Vaio being offered for €80 (they originally cost €1k+!) so I thought I’d pick it up and have a play. Join me in an adventure in upgrading this little machine;
The Sony feels very well made and sits better on your lap than its modern equivalent the GPD Pocket. Like the Pocket it also has a thinkpad style track-point which is great for something of this form-factor. Also of note is the high-quality screen, which considering its now ten years old still manages to impress. What’s not so impressive is it’s performance. What follows is my attempt to make this little laptop usable in 2019…
Flushing away the horror of Windows Vista
The Sony arrived with the abomination that is Vista. It was unbearably slow that it was swiftly replaced with Windows 7. WIn 7 runs dramatically faster, but is still hampered by its spinning HDD. It’ll reportedly run Win 10, but all the drivers for Win 7 are available over on the Sony website. Win 7 will do for now.
Replacing the Hard Drive with an SSD
One of the biggest improvements you can make to this (or any laptop or PC) laptop is to upgrade the older style spinning disk drive to a newer solid state one. Being slightly old unfortunately means the connector found inside is of a rarer ‘ZIF’ type. This leaves you with a couple of options; paying over the odds on ebay for a true ZIF drive, or taking a gamble with buying a ZIF adapter, then buying a cheaper SSD. Rather than risking buying the adapter and a SATA drive only for it not to work, I guessed it was best to stump up the 65 euros for an original 60gb ZIF drive.
This video, despite being at 240p, is a great help with
installing the drive;
Older spinning Hard Disk speeds;
Whoosh SSD drive speeds…..
As you can see upgrading from a spinning disk to a solid state drive has dramatically improved the read/write speeds of this little laptop. Windows now loads faster and is generally more ‘snappy’ (within reason).
Adding more RAM with Readyboost
The 2gb of soldered in RAM isn’t really enough to run applications anymore (especially web pages), but Windows 7 allows something called ‘readyboost’… basically the os allots memory from USB cards/sticks that it can then use as its own. Luckily the Sony has a dedicated SD card slot that can be used for this.
 |
| Pop it in and you’re good to go |
For the most optimized SD Card, format it as exFat and increase the memory allocation to 32mb;
 |
| exFat and 32mb selected |
Then set the card to be used for Ready-boost (if you can’t find it take out the card and put it in again, on the window that subsequently pops up).
In the options, I set the card to be exclusively used for readyboost, allocating the entire capacity of the card for this purpose;
 |
| Allocating the maximum amount of card memory |
Does it work? I can’t say I felt much of an improvement, but who knows, hopefully it’s freeing up some memory somewhere.
Moving on to Win 10
It was as simple as clicking ‘upgrade’ so I gave it a go. Here’s a video of my Vaio booting in around 1 min;