Sony’s Vaio P was one of the most unusual laptops of its time. It was tiny enough to fit in a pocket, beautifully designed, and absurdly expensive. But underneath that iconic shell was an Intel Atom processor with a reputation for painfully slow performance.
So 16 years later, I decided to give the Vaio P another chance.
In this video, I install a lightweight version of Windows 8.1, work around some unexpected CPU throttling, test Office 2010 and LibreOffice, try modern web browsing with Supermium and Pale Moon, and see how it handles classic games including Zuma, Age of Empires II, Quake III, Half-Life and GTA: Vice City.
Some results were much better than I expected. Others… not so much.
Can this tiny Sony still serve a purpose in 2026?
#SonyVaio #VaioP #RetroTech #VintageComputing
source
It'd be more interesting if you installed Linux on it
install antix in that!!!!!!
A side project I am working on is porting busybox to the psp, not linux or a kernel, but more of a unix-like environment to do stuff… Sometimes it would be nice to use vim or paskall otg.
With a little bit of engineering, seems like someone could make a motherboard that is updated….
The Vaio P's design is just truly beautiful, and will surely still turn heads when used today. I really wish Sony will give the Vaio P another chance with today's hardware. Even a low powered Intel N-series processor of today performs lightspeed faster than the old Intel Atom.
Linux???????
Atom procesos where horrible with direct x. Open gl works better
what if you try to run linux on it?
Young me couldn't afford it. 😢
Adult me cannot buy it. 😢
Love to see this thing board modded with todays specs like intel's ge3, amd's ai max and qualcomms x elite. ❤
I know you may have heard this alot, but please give it a shot. Try MX Linux or Q4OS, as they are the most possible lightweight linux distros out there and they would include a very light and faster web browsing, and doesnt really make the cpu suffer, you can also try downgrading to Windows XP, but i really dont think thats possible, would give it a shot. Still tho good video!
Imagine making a new one with lastest amd or Intel chip and atleast 16gb ram it would be a pretty cool handheld
Cual Durro 3000
Lenovo had the Pocket Yoga to directly compete with the Vaio P. Not sure what happened to it.
With Arm, Sony could have made a capable machine in this form factor today. But it's not that practical outside of niche uses or word processing/note taking. That screen is too small and short. As a complete cyberdeck, yeah.
I still want one.
i had a netbook with atom z520 and 2gb ram, was painfully slow, i sold it in 2015, was usable only with linux ubuntu 10.04
perfect for tiny linux
This thing would've been perfect for the machine where I run Obsidian for note-taking and writing, and nothing else.
Atom CPUs were really bad
Well.. this combined with current tech probably will get some shares in market.. running ChromeOS paired with ARM SoC.. this thing probably rocks.. but yeah.. why I said that this will get some shares in the market becuse of.. there's is already many of portable PC on the market.. tablets and even smartphones now capable of doing some PC works.. and running Windows in this current era where Windows are the worse OS on the market is.. not a good idea as starters..
Wındows 10 mbr mode ınsstqql