VAIO Update: do I need this soft to update from Sony

I uninstalled all of unecessary files in the begining, including Sony Update tool. I keeps checking manually http://esupport.sony.com to download available updates to my SZ. But since quite a long time I have not seen any new updates when manually checked this update Site.
I just wonder whether I have to reinstall this Tool in order to get new updates????

Tks a lot for your replies.

 

I never used a Sony laptop but I guess the software is just a way to get the updates

 

No you do not need it. The app would periodically go to a now defunct page on the Sony Support site and check for updates and allow you to install them. But as I said the page no longer functions so the app is useless. The process you use of manually checking duplicates exactly what the app was intended to do. When I was creating the FZ Clean Install document. I came across this app, could not get it to function and then talked to Sony Support who explained that the web page was no longer running and the proper procedure was a manual check of the support page for a specific model.

Gary

 

The question was not what does it do, the question was is it still needed.

Sorry, but I have to ask, if you have never used a Sony laptop why are you answering Sony specific questions in a Sony forum? I can understand answering non Sony specific questions that might pop up here, but not something this specific.



Gary

 

The VAIO Update utility usually does not provide the latest updates, and it's practically useless most of the time.

Here are places to look for the latest VAIO utilities:

Japan Support (files are stored on Japan Support FTP -- another way to search for the latest updates: Sort by date with an FTP client, open the readme.txt file with a web browser and change the character encoding to Japanese, then paste the Japanese text in Google Translate to find out about the file) and Asia Pacific Support usually distribute updates first, often a week apart from each other. You can use Google Translate to translate the Japanese text. I haven't found a backlog of every newly distributed update on the Sony Asia Pacific support site, only what's in the Latest Downloads section, which only has enough space for three or four entries, so this should be checked everyday.

Original utilities that are on factory-installed OSes are not distributed online by Japan Support and sometimes those utilities have a higher version number than what's available elsewhere. Usually those are distributed first on Europe's vaio-link ftp server in three locations ( XPDOWNGRADE, ORIGINAL, PUB DOWNLOADS) and North America's esupport.sony.com. It's a good idea to sort the directories by date in your FTP client to find what's newly available in vaio-link.

North America Support's esupport.sony.com site is usually last to distribute updates, and they normally place a model restriction wrapper on all their utilities for some odd reason (filenames ending with -US usually have the model restriction wrapper, while -UN files distributed on other Sony support sites don't). But it's the only place to find certain utilities like SmartWi XP (SmartWi for Vista AKA Network Utility AKA Smart Network v1.0.00.06150 is available on vaio-link). If you would like to bypass the model restriction wrapper, you can use Universal Extractor.

I forgot to add: There are times when they only provide an update for a particular set of models, but most of the time they'll be compatible with other VAIOs as well. You can test if an update will work by running the actual setup files extracted with Universal Extractor.

 

"I guess the software is just a way to get the updates" = "I guess the software is just ONE possible way to get the updates" = there are other ways like updating manually = so it's not needed

The answer was implicit

 

The Vaio update utility v. 3.0.03.09030 (for Vista) is available from the Asia Pacific site and links to the correct web page at least for my SZ model.

I use it to check for available updates manually from time to time, as I cherish my PC resources.