The VAIO goes portable

The Sony Vaio 505 was a line of laptop computers that were first introduced by Sony in the late 1990s. The Vaio 505 was known for its thin and lightweight design, which made it a popular choice among mobile professionals.

The Sony VAIO 505 series of laptops were available with different variations of the Intel 440TX chipset, which was a popular chipset at the time of the VAIO 505’s release in the late 1990s. The chipset provided support for Intel Pentium III and Celeron processors, as well as support for AGP graphics and up to 1 GB of RAM. Some variations of the Vaio 505 also included integrated graphics using the Intel 810 chipset.
Closest match we have is the Intel YM430TX which uses the same i430TX chipset as the VAIO laptop.

The (cracked) restore utility, this requires us to have a HDD that is already preformatted to FAT32. IF this isn’t done you will need to use the FDISK utility found on the Windows 9x bootdisk to set this up. Also if you have two or more CD-ROM drives the install will not be able to mount the optical drive, as it assigns it the letter Z:

After the restore has completed we are booted into Windows 98, the first edition.

OEM Customization

A few wallpapers are included with the VAIO water being set as the default, other wallpapers include VAIO Sky (As seen in the PCV-70), VAIO Earth and VAIO Wind.

A screensaver is also included, the PictureGear Screen Saver which acts as a photo screensaver that you can link your images to. Up to eight image files can be used with transition effects.

A customized Welcome To Windows screen, with a fifth option for launching the Vaio desktop space.

Included Software

Start Menu with its own category for preinstalled VAIO software

VAIO Space

Demonstration software that details the features and capabilities of the notebook. It also provided tutorials. It was a pre-installed software on Sony VAIO computers that provided a centralized location for managing media and accessing online services.

FrontPage Express

FrontPage Express was designed to be an easy-to-use tool for creating basic web pages without requiring any knowledge of HTML coding. It had a simple interface that allowed users to drag and drop images, text, and other elements onto a page and arrange them as desired. It also provided basic formatting tools, such as font and color selection, and allowed users to preview their pages in a web browser.

ScribblePad

Some models for this laptop had a touchscreen along with a stylus which allowed the user freehand input. TO take advantage of this Sony had included their own ScribblePad utility. This was a necessarily as Windows 98 did not include any pen input functionally (That I know of).

VoiceMemo

A utility for recording notes in text or voice format. These remain on the desktop after creation and can be moved about freely, similar to the sticky notes on Windows 7. The background colour can be customized using the standard Windows palette along with the font style.

PowerPanel

A very interesting utility that lets you control some of the power features of the laptop. The CPU speed can be adjusted to a slower speed to conserve the battery, You can also switch the HDD into standby immediately rather than wait for the OS to do it, and switch to standby or hibernate mode.
The PowerPanel appears as a sidebar on the desktop than can be set to autohide if its not needed.

MediaBar

Some sort of Sony branded music CD player, kind of redundant since Windows 98 already comes with one, unless this plays some specific Sony format? Video files in the AVI/MOV or MPEG format can be played.

PictureGear WallpaperMaker

A software program developed by Sony Corporation that allows users to create customized wallpapers for their computers. With this, users can choose from a variety of pre-designed templates or create their own custom wallpaper designs using their own photos or images. The software includes a variety of tools for editing and manipulating images, such as adjusting brightness and contrast, adding text and graphics, and applying special effects.

Sony Notebook Setup

Graphical BIOS utility where you can change settings without having to enter the BIOS.

PhoneTools

A utility to manage phone calls, Fax and user contacts.
It also appears to support cellular 2G GSM modules to make add receive phone calls over a mobile network, and there is also support for SMS messages. Alternatively you can connect a Sony phone to the computer instead, and use its GSM modem for an internet connection.