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New Sony VAIO Laptop w/ 16.1" Screen
calc writes "Sony Japan has announced a new VAIO laptop that comes with a DVD-R/RW CD-R/RW drive along with a Radeon 7500 Mobility and 16.1" UXGA LCD." The spacebar on my thinkpad has been
dying... maybe its time for a change. Sony? You listening? *grin*
I recently went shopping for a laptop, and seriously considered a Sony 16.1" screen model. I decided against purchasing a Sony product because
Sony has an extremely bad policy in regard to OS support.
Sony encodes the BIOS with a designation describing the OS that it was sold with. This designation is checked by the drivers supplied by Sony. If the driver OS doesn't match the BIOS designation, the drivers do not load. This is to prevent buyers from installing an OS that the laptop was not sold with. Sony also does not make driver packages available for download online.
The end result is that you will be stuck with whatever OS the machine was sold with. Want to run Win2K Server on a machine sold with Win XP? Too Bad.
Want to dual boot Win2K and XP. Nah. Want to upgrade when the next Windows comes out? Nope.
The only exception to this is that it is possible with some fiddling to install Win XP Pro on a machine that came with XP Home. But don't count on Sony to tell you how! They won't.
In my opinion the result is that Sony laptops are completely unsuitable for technically inclined users.
BTW, my search ended up with a Compaq 2800T with WinXP and the same Radeon card as the Sony. It's got a 15.1" screen, USB 2.0 and is FAR more portable. It also runs RedHat 7.3 and Windows 2000 just fine.It's also expandable to 1gig of RAM and has USB 2.0. The configurability from the Compaq store is also far better than with the Sony.
Sony? Not until they adopt a less hostile OS policy.