Sony VAIO PCG-FX101 Review

Overall Rating

The Keyboard and Screen are a dream to use.
Excellent conectivity to other devices

Insufficient memory as standard. No Floppy Drive. CD Rom drive feels flimsy and poor quality. Battery life practically non-exsistent.

When I first bought my machine I loved it, but as the weeks went on I realised that the FX101 wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Insufficient memory puts the hard drive under a lot of strain and the constant drive activity becomes annoying making an upgrade a must. The lack of a flopy drive not only makes getting files on and off the machine a problem but makes upgrading to Win XP difficult as the BIOS flash from SONY needs to be run from Floppy. The battery (the least said the better) is only useful for moving between power sockets in the home. I have had an average of 45 mins use of the battery and as little as 25 mins on a full charge.

Upgrading is a must with this machine, souring the sweet low price you may have paid.

You get what you pay for
BE WARNED (TIMBLEWEE)

Members' Comments onTimblewee.'s Review

• Sheppard. on 9th May 2003

  I'm sad :-(( since my Sony Vaio PCG-FX101 recognizes 256Mb instead of the 512Mb installed. I checked the memory and that's 100% compatible and OK! So it's really one of the two memory banks that's broken.
  
  
  
  OR... can it be a software/BIOS failure? I run Windows 2000.
  
  
  
  Hopefully you can help me/advise me!

• torcuato on 1st Oct 2003

  I also have two 64MB memory modules and only recognizes one of them.... it doesn't matter where i put any of the modules, or swaping them (i tried all possible combinations module/socket) only recognizes 64Mb

• danielp on 14th Oct 2003

  I also have a problem with my second memory slot. In the first one all of my modules will work. But a single module in the second bank leads to no boot at all and one module in every bank ends up in only one used bank.
  Does the FX101 Bios perhaps only support one bank???

• maur0 on 25th Aug 2004

  Hi everyone,
  
  I've got a problem with the bios of my PCG-FX101. The upgrade failed. Does someone know if the bios chip is easy to re-flash?
  
  thanks
  
  Mauro

• Queeny on 6th Oct 2004

  Hey..did you fix your Sony Vaio PGC-FX101 bios issue? Mine simply will not start. It's like stuck on the SONY screen ...not going into the BIOS...what should I do?
  
  I need the system to work . . .please advise !!!
  
  thanks

• maur0 on 4th Nov 2004

  Hi,
  my notebook behaves as yours. Unfortunately I didn't solve the problem yet. The bios chip is a TSOP soldered in the motherboard. It is difficult to remove and re-flash. Did you contact SONY for that? Did you download the update file from the Vaio-link site as I done?

• aevans1108 on 13th Dec 2004

  My PCG-FX270 has exactly the same problem.
  
  It had 512MB of RAM recognized and working under Windows 2000.
  
  I sent it to Sony to have them fix the DVD drive and while it was there, I asked them to flash the BIOS to the latest version.
  
  Now, only bank 0 is recognized. IE: It only has 256 MB of RAM now.
  
  The problem, of course is that I just realized this over two years later... and of course all the Sony sites say that if I try to flash the BIOS myself with anything other than the original RAM (which is lost - it came with 192 MB), it will render the system unusable.
  
  So, I guess I'm stuck.
  
  I've had more problems with this system than I can count: memory bank failure, DVD drive failure, back-light failure, W2K incompatibilities, etc... and of course, their tech support is is a bunch of automatons who do nothing but read scripts. I'll never buy Sony again.

• induce on 16th Mar 2006

  I have a problem with my laptop. It seems to get stuck on the thinkpad screen. Is it a processor problem?
  Can anyone help please? My dad will kill me!