Heck of a Hack: Quad-booting, Over-clocked Sony VAIO UX

Some creatures were never meant to live, like Frankenstein’s monster, a mish-mash of body parts stitched together and given life through unholy means. The Sony VAIO UX experiment unveiled at the Micro PC Talk forum follows that vein, except as possibly the fastest UMPC in the world, I’m sure it’s too busy bringing the heat to be afraid of fire. Speed good!

In all seriousness, this ambitious project is truly amazing. Basically, forum member darkerx bought a brand new Sony VAIO UX 490 and applied what appears to be the best hardware and software mods ever contributed to that forum.

Hardware

• SSD: 48GB SSD –> 128GB RunCore Pro IV SSD
• Processor: 1.2GHz Core 2 Solo U2200 –> 1.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7700 overclocked to 1.438GHz
• WLAN: HSDPA 3G module for voice and data
• Wifi: Intel 3945ABG –> Intel 4965AGN

Software

• OS: Quad-boots Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.7, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Vista Business, and Windows XP Professional

Okay, that quad-boot seems terribly redundant, but the point wasn’t to pick from the best mods but to showcase all of them. Only mod I can see remaining that doesn’t require magically creating more space in that ultra-mobile frame is upgrading the memory, and they’re working on that. Looks like one monster of a UMPC. I commend and fear your genius, good sirs.

Thanks to UMPCPortal for their excellent summary and breakdown