AfterDawn: News

Sony promises more clarity on VAIO virtualization support

Following a number of complaints at the revelation that Sony imposed a block on Intel's Virtualization Technology (VT) in some VAIO models - which is present in the Core 2 Duo chip that ships with affected VAIO notebooks - Sony has promised The Register that it will make an effort to clarify the policy more clearly on its websites.

Customers were unhappy to learn about the limitation in the VAIO BIOS after buying a model which Sony recommends for the upcoming Windows 7, because it blocks Windows 7's XP-mode. It is a feature that has received considerable media attention and put some minds at ease about going with Windows 7, so it isn't inconceivable that customers who saw Sony advertise VAIO notebooks for Windows 7 assumed they could use this feature, even if they didn't know the VT technology is included in the CPU.



If they did know, then they most likely would have been unaware that Sony has disabled it since its advertisements fail to declare the fact. "I'll take the action to be clearer on our site that VT will not be enabled," Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert promised The Register.

He said the Vaio Z series would be "top of the list" for getting VT support in the US but said he could not comment on getting the BIOS of Sony VAIO's in Europe working with VT.

Written by: James Delahunty @ 13 Aug 2009 21:17

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• 10 comments

• DXR88

  Quote:top of the list" for getting VT support in the US but said he could not comment on getting the BIOS of Sony VAIO's in Europe working with VT.don't bullshit you customers we all know there is no difference between the US BIOS and the Europe BIOS. because there is no difference expect to see you precious Europe VAIO's using the US BIOS of coarse you could just DRM the BIOS with regional preferences.

  13.8.2009 23:23 #1

• DXR88

  My bad....

  13.8.2009 23:24 #2

• KillerBug

  Wow, they will put a small note on the website...that shouldn't do much of anything.

  13.8.2009 23:54 #3

• Mysttic

  What about for all the people who were mislead when they bought the laptop? It does nothing for them who's decision point may have changed had this been made public. I expect we have not heard the end of this.

  14.8.2009 02:14 #4

• kyo28

  I think Sony dropped the ball there. They should either provide a BIOS update so XP mode can be activated or they should have clearly metoined this in the tech specs of these notebooks.

  14.8.2009 08:09 #5

• varnull

  Bios update??.. change a couple of ff to 01 reflash and good to go.. lmfao!!
  
  did that yesterday.. device hardware locking to a specific OS is ILLEGAL in Europe.. guess fony didn't know that.. I have sent a sample of their locked bios and the simple modifications needed to the Office of Fair Trading (UK) with a written complaint mentioning the European antitrust ruling of 2006
  

  
  
  Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work.
  I would rather you hate me for who I am than love me for what I am not.
  “It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” - Bruce Schneier

  14.8.2009 08:17 #6

• pirkster

  Since it won't affect 99% of users... thus begs the question:
  
  who cares?
  
  Their only mistake was advertising, and they've fixed it.
  
  This reminds me of all the folks clamoring for console backwards compatibility, when in reality very few actually used the feature. I'd expect the same with "XP mode."

  14.8.2009 11:22 #7

• bradjones

  No offense, but who is going to buy a $2k state of the art laptop and then run an out of date OS on it? If that is the case just download/buy XP. I am sure Sony never promised this feature nor advertised it, right? Maybe I am missing something. I guess they do have a link to the MS site, but nothing that I see on the Sony side.

  14.8.2009 19:01 #8

• KillerBug

  Originally posted by bradjones: No offense, but who is going to buy a $2k state of the art laptop and then run an out of date OS on it? If that is the case just download/buy XP. I am sure Sony never promised this feature nor advertised it, right? Maybe I am missing something. I guess they do have a link to the MS site, but nothing that I see on the Sony side.Microsoft's advertising for Windows 7 includes the Virtual XP feature. This is rarely needed, but it bridges several gaps in program compatability that Vista never did, even with it's virtual machine. Most laptop buyers already own another older computer, and they often want or even NEED to transfer their old programs to the new machine. I would guess that this affects about as many people as a non-burning DVD burner would affect.
  
  Yes, you can change a few bits in the bios update file and re-flash, but there goes your warantee! A warantee that you will probably need given the low quality parts that can be damaged by virtualization.

  14.8.2009 23:19 #9

• borhan9

  leave the feature of enabling and disabling features of operating systems to the consumer, its as simple as that.

  15.8.2009 22:44 #10