Handtops, UMPC - UX180P vs U750P Sony Software comparison - UX180P, UX180, U750, U750P, U70, U70P, UX90

This time around, Sony USA Support was more kind enough to include more of the software needed for reinstallation from scratch on a UX180P. In addition to the bare drivers needed for the UX180 hardware, the following software utilities are also posted on the Sony website, as well as a couple more.

Sony Utilities DLL
Sony Utility Series
VAIO® Event Services
VAIO Camera Utility
VAIO Camera Capture Utility
Battery Check Utility
VAIO Touch Launcher
Special Button Utility
Zoom Utility
Image Conversion Filter Driver

Unfortunately, it seems they have still only did half the job in doing so. Among the translation issues I found were:

Special Button Utility - comes with English, Korean, and Japanese string files, but only comes with Korean help files.
Setting Utility Series - only comes with Korean and German help files.
VAIO Camera Utility - only comes with Japanese help files.
VAIO Camera Capture Utility - comes with English, Korean, and Japanese string files, but only comes with Korean help files.

On the software specifically, Sony Vaio Touch Launcher is a nice utility, but only works at 1024x600. Any other resolution produces cropping, does not automatically resize or even scale at resolutions with similar aspect ratios as 800x480.

The VAIO Camera Utility and VAIO Camera Capture Utility only work with the Sony camera and not any other attached USB webcam.

The Battery Check Utility serves only to provide information to the Sony Utilities DLL, not to directly inform the user of the actual battery status.

The Zoom Utility might be a .Net application, I'm not sure on this one. There are a lot of things about this utility's installer that seems quite mysterious to me.

Toshiba Bluetooth Stack Utility can easily be hacked to be used on other USB bluetooth devices. Unfortunately, it goes into an evalutation mode and stops working after 30 days when done so. It seems easy to use but loaded on the features; I think I still like Bluesoleil over the Toshiba stack.

Comparison of the UX180 and U750 Gunze drivers shows it's an almost identical panel, with a slightly updated driver. What specifically is updated is not know, but here are the differences.

U750 Gunze drivers - taken from version.txt
Version : 1.0.3.6
Release day 2004/09/23
DCUCPL.exe 1.0.1.2
Setup.exe 1.0.2.9
TPCalib.exe 1.0.3.2
TPSettingUtil.cpl 1.0.2.4
TPSound.exe 1.0.1.6
Uninst.exe 1.0.2.0
GzTPMou.sys 1.0.2.1
GzTPHID.sys 1.0.2.0

UX180P Gunze drivers - taken from version.txt
Version : 2.0.1.3
Release day 2006/04/11
DCUCPL.exe 1.0.1.2
Setup.exe 2.0.0.0
TPCalib.exe 1.0.3.2
TPSettingUtil.cpl 2.0.0.7
TPSound.exe 2.0.1.3
Uninst.exe 1.0.2.1
GzTPMou.sys 2.0.0.5
GzTPHID.sys 1.0.2.0

In addition, the UX180 provides a registry patch for its Gunze driver. What it's supposed to fix is unknown, but the patch is as follows.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesGunzeParameters1]
"Tolerance"=dword:000001c2

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesGunzeParameters1]
"UserTimeDelay"=dword:000004b0