Sony Vaio and ***** VISTA

A

AOWYN

Well-Known Member
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28 Dec 2002
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263
www.clinksystems.com
I can't get any help from the wonderful CLUB VAIO so am seeking help here. I have "upgraded from a sony T2XP small laptop to TZ 21 which unfortunately comes only with VISTA. This combined wirth Office 2007 is such a disaster that I am seriously considering giving bup and finally going to APPLE.
Joking apart, this is a 5 year step back in time and performance.
Question, does anuybody know how to get rid of VISTA and install XP in a way which can be done by a normal humnan being, not some freaking 15 year-old techie?
All I want is a small, long battery life laptop for travelling and the T2 was pretty good, but this "upgrade" is a disaster.
 
What's wrong?

I do a lot of stuff and use a lot of programs - was initially worried when i first got Vista on my new laptop this xmas, but I like it now...
 
I have a TZ and it is fine. What is wrong with it?

Go to add/remove programs and get rid of the sony stuff if you can - that helps a lot.
 
Return it to the suppliers as not of merchantable quality and get them to provide a toshiba satellite pro with XP - Toshiba still provide this - I know that's just what we did.

I don't work for any IT company and can only recommend that which I have found to be excellent value over the last 15 years or so.

Good luck

Ken
 
I just typed a long list of things that go wrong, one of them being that it decides to exit apps which I am using on its own. Which it did, which is why I lost the list while i was trying to correct the typos.

For now I will just say that it frequestly locks up, it takes about 5 minutes to come back from hibernation and I can type faster that the characters reach the screen in a WORD doc. AllI want is long battery life, light weight, small size so that I can fit it in my coat pocket and stope the [--word removed--] at Ryan from charging extra for it and avoid needing an extra laptop bag which the idiots in charge of security at British airports don't allow.
HELP, how do I get rid of VISTA, or, who wants to buy a three week old POS Sony are no help and as I bougfht it at DABS you can guess how much help I am going to get from them.
 
Sounds to me more like a hardware problem then Vista. I have used Vista on a laptop without having your type of problems. Send it back for a replacement you should not have these type of issues. (I think Vista can be a convenient whipping boy at times, just like XP when it first came out).
 
I had some speed and freezing problems on a new Toshiba with Vista, even with 2 Mb. It came with Norton pre installed, when that was removed things improved greatly.
 
A month ago, an old friend turned up at my door with one of these models, asking me to sort out some problems.
My wife loved the style, cuteness and ease of use of the machine.
However, I wasn't so smitten with it. As I recall, it had 1 Gb memory as standard. This has to run not only Vista Business, but a whole host of Vaio-special software, which runs in the background. The list of resident services running is endless.
Also small irritants like a separate tiny slider to activate/desactivate Wifi independently from the two software panels (one Vista, one Vaio ). Keeping the connection alive and running was a PITA.
Pereformance was poor-not for small work like surfing, Excel or Word, but with both or more programs open at the same time, it dropped off significantly.
Main reason is the lack of memory. One option is not installing/disinstalling some Vaio programs (like the one you can start up a DVD without starting up Vista), but you lose a lot of media functions, as well as the use of software you paid (a lot) for...
The other route is adding memory. However the machine has only one slot. So you dump the existing 1 Gb chip for a 2 Gb one. In my friends case, the dealer gave him a small refund, but the exhcange cost him 1/4 of the complete unit!

/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
You will find that vista needs a lot of RAM to work well, no experience of Vaio - not considered an industrial machine (Yet). But Vista works very well on about 6GB of ram. I suspect that SONY have added alot of their own software which isnt helping. As for Office 2007 lots of users are very unhappy with it - some have reverted to XP and office 2003 its because the controls are radically different from what they are used to. Its a case of if its not broke dont fix it, theres nothing quite as effective in unsettling the workforce as changing software. Increasingly I am finding users asking for linux and star office and unless there is a serious application requirement that cannot be satisfied unless you have a huge memory, storage, processor and software capability that only microsoft or mac can satisfy then the ASUS EeePc running Linux is a viable device for most users. No Iam not selling them! But that combination linux and star office breaths life into old laptops because the system resource requirement for linux is so small.

The problem you will face is that many of the features sony sell (that you bought) will only work in the Vista environment, I suppose you could just buy another hard disk for the machine and install an alternative operating system on that - it COULD be a cheaper way out - at least you wont trash the original build.
 
Office 97 won't run on Vista. XP is not going to be available much longer so if you wish to continue with Office'97 go buy XP now. Put the XP CD in the drive after setting in BIOS "boot from CD". It will ask if you want to format the disk before installing XP to which you want to answer "yes" to wipe out your Vista and everything else. So if you have any data stored on the hard disk save it onto CD ROM or memory stick first.
 
Really bad idea with this particular laptop as there is a lot of Sony software that makes it work (or not in this case!), that would need loading back on...... and probably finding from the net first etc etc etc...

I'm in the 'take it back' camp.... let Dabs sort it out.... they are owned by BT so you probably have a fighting chance if you really kick and scream.....
 
Having owned and reinstalled sony vaio's in the past, I'd agree. Reinstall is a real pain, due to the proprietary bits that make Vaio's run. Reinstalls with Vaio's best done by someone with better than average computer experience. Unless recent models have changed.
 
[ QUOTE ]
... only problem is Navigation software.

[/ QUOTE ]
For navigation software use GPSNavX or MacEnc. Excellent software and first class support. So that means that there are no problems with a Mac then.
I'd hesitate to install XP on a Sony (or any other) laptop without doing a trawl of the web to see if someone else has done it first. You only need to have a problem with, say, the video card driver to get yourself into a bit of a corner. It could be that there are no XP drivers for some of the built-in bits and pieces, only Vista drivers.
MS do seem to have got themselves in a bit of a pickle with Vista - most of the people I work with have not upgraded because the total cost (ie that which includes all the other necessary software upgrades) is just too much. That includes our own work network - we can't afford to sort out upgrade problems on 350 XP machines, either now or in the forseeable future.
 
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