Bought SonySZ650N - replaced Vista by XP

Hi,
After spending several days trying to tweak various drivers to work, and also frustrated by the fact that a supposedly very-fast Intel core 2 duo + 2g ram crawls with Vista Business, I took the plunge, formatted my laptop and installed XP. (I had an XP CD from an earlier thinkpad laptop which stopped working...)

It was really very simple to get XP working - all one really needs to do is to pre-download some of the core drivers to a USB stick from here.

Infact, really, what you need to do is at the minimum, download the network drivers, common shared library for sony and the device controller drivers - that will get XP connected to the net after an install and you can download everything else from your new(!) XP laptop.

Installation of XP was a breeze - as it stands now, I have all devices working (including Bluetooth with my Bberry) and the laptop is blazing fast. I don't see any missed functionality (including soft keys etc. - all work fine)

So, for all those frustated with Vista - a gentle nudge to move down to XP - it is really very simple. I saw several long threads on using XP and its issues - never faced any.

Just one tip - don't bother installing Toshiba BT - the default XP BT drivers work fine - just edit bth.inf in windows\inf to have the correct hardware PID/VID inside the ALPS section.

Good riddance.

 

Does that also mean your FN+Brightness works under stamina mode?

 

Hello, actually, no. I never use stamina mode - but since you asked, I tried - in stamina mode, trying Fn+Brightness does not increase/decrease the brightness. I guess I should have said it works for everything I use - which is camera, sound, network, graphics driver, dvd, BT, fingerprint

 

Anyone have any links to explanations of how to set up bluetooth/blackberry to access the internet? Thanks!

 

Anybody else has any insight regarding the supposedly poor performance of the SZ6 running Vista?
Im about to purchase one and this is of great concern to me.

I assume the OP didnt do a clean install either...

 

SZ6 running Vista isn't as slow as you may have heard (assuming that the bloatware, services, and startup programs have been tweaked); it's that it is less resource hogging and more program compatibility when you have XP on it. I have ~300MB PF Usage on boot with a firewall and antivirus and peerguardian with XP, while I had ~600MB with Vista.

 

Yes, that is correct. I did not do a clean install. Also, to put it in perspective, when I say Vista was crawling, it was relative to XP. It's not that the laptop was painfully slow. But when one sees the specs of the laptop and the amount of HD grinding Vista subjected it to, I'd cringe.

So, yes, it is much slower compared to XP. But in absolute terms, Vista was usable.

 

Sure. I use Cingular - and it works great. Follow http://www.somelifeblog.com/2007/03/blackberry-8800-modem-for-laptop-view.html

 

yah if you do a clean install - xp and vista are both blazing fast....faster than all your friends laptops (well unless they have a new santa rosa laptop too)

but thats if you do a clean install, personally i think just removing all the bloatware, etc is nothing compared to actually formating and reinstalling.

 

Awesome, I'll be putting XP on my 650 too.

 

Update: this software is potentially dangerous if you enable auto-updates. One of the new xp updates messed up these transformations and I couldn't booth either in safe or normal mode - had to revert to a rescue command line. Net result - removed vista transformation pack, resorted to only a skinning engine - installed brico pack - works great, no update issues since it does not replace core system files.
regds
arjun

incidentally, after downgrading to XP, I installed the 'vista transformation pack' by Window's X Shrine (free, google for it). I now have a laptop that looks like my old Vista, but with the performance of XP (well, it is a tad slower than native XP but magnitudes faster than Vista). Why did I do it ? I loved the Vista UI but did not love the performance.

 

Update: Yes, this works fine. I forgot to post - there is a new BIOS available for the 650 that solves this issue. My fn keys work in both modes now (which is good - the full bright screen hurts my eyes)

 

Wait, so was your version of XP retail, or bundled with your IBM laptop?