No Netgear ReadyNAS either?
so not quite all then...
4 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2008
I bought a Vaio last year after looking on their site and seeing XP drivers available for others in the series. When I came back with my nice new laptop, and checked the fine-print to get the actual model, and download the drivers, I found they refuse to supply drivers for that particular one! They've dug their heels in, despite appeals on their forums from many purchaser. Several hours hunting on the web found functioning drivers, but Sony won't supply them. They obviously reckon their relationship with Microsoft is more important that the one they have with Customers.
The disk started showing errors, and I asked them what the procedure was for returning under warranty if a scan didn't fix it, and the reply I got mostly concerned how it would need to have the original operating system on before they'd accept it, and trying to scare me off by saying there would be a charge of over £200 if there was no fault found. They never actually told me how to initiate a return either!
I'd forgotten at the time, about Sony's disgraceful performance with the CD rootkits, but now I'm trying to avoid Sony products. Not easy when I was looking a HiFi systems last month.
Anyway. The vaio I have isn't bad at the moment. Interestingly Wubi-installed Ubuntu can find drivers for all the components (A good job too, as for some reason the XP-Pro drivers have given up on the SD slot. I suspect an MS 'update'.). If the disk dies I'll risk wrecking the whole machine (no nice easy slot-in disk-caddy on mine), rather than give the Vista-pushers another penny. Then it'll become an Ubuntu system, probably with a virtualbox XP machine for the few Windows essentials I have.
The one I have has Ubuntu on it, together with a program called 'Wader' for the 3G access. It has a modified xorg.conf for the display, but is otherwise standard. According to the developers' blog at http://webbookblog.com the Linux OS is supposed to be the production version.
The display drivers are a bit sub-standard atm, but updates expected soon, so Compiz will be usable.
My EeePC is also good, except a standard issue 701 runs out of space just installing the Asus patches and updates. I'm going to have to sort out a recovery USB-stick and get rid of the shadow partition, to see if that does the job.