No Windows 7 XP Mode For Sony Vaio Z Owners 198
Voyager529 writes "While virtually every Core 2 Duo processor supports the hardware virtualization technology that powers the Windows 7 XP Mode, The Register UK reports that the Core 2 Duo processors in the Sony Vaio Z series laptops had the virtualization features intentionally crippled in the BIOS. Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert stated that the QA engineers did this to make the systems more resilient against malicious code. He also stated that while they are considering enabling VT in some laptop models due to the backlash, the Z series are not among those being retrofitted."
What? Malicious code?? (Score:5, Funny)
Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert stated that the QA engineers did this to make the systems more resilient against malicious code.
If they don't like Windows XP they can say so. Calling it malicious code will piss off Microsoft no end.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What? Malicious code?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope. That shipped built in.
What did you THINK was eventually going to form Skynet anyways?
Re:What? Malicious code?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What? Malicious code?? (Score:5, Informative)
There are a few proof-of-concept rootkits that work by installing a thin hypervisor in hyperprivileged mode
No, there is one that the creators claim to operate like this.
This is virtually undetectable to the OS
No, it's claimed to be undetectable, but when challenged [zdnet.com], the creators won't let anyone examine it to see. [zdnet.com]
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Sony and MS working together. This cannot end well.
Throw in Steve Jobs to the mix and they'll be able to create an evil legion that will surely take over the world. Even Superman won't be able to save us.
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Even Superman won't be able to save us.
But Chuck Norris can!
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Until corroborating links are supplied, I'll assume you're a Sony fan-boi. Not because I DON'T believe you, I just don't WANT to.
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Lenovo disables it on almost all of their laptops, but its a simple step to go into bios and change the setting.
Dell disables it on a few random laptops, like the 1420N and D830, but once again its in the bios....usually under POST settings.
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My old-ish Vaio (has a Core Duo, not the later Core 2 Duo) has VT disabled too, no BIOS setting to re-enable it, bery annoying and very pointless.
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No you're wrong sorry, most Core Duos do support VT. (I have a T2300, not T2300E)
"Contrary to early reports, the Intel Core Duo supports Intel VT x86 virtualization, except in the T2300E model and proprietary T2050/T2150/T2250 mounted by OEMs"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_duo [wikipedia.org]
http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=22731 [intel.com]
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Sorry for the double post, but here's another one:
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=ideaPad&thread.id=11293&page=2 [lenovo.com]
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And another: http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-8930g/ [marcansoft.com]
Honestly, that's my last link... Google for others. It's not hard. I suggest looking for: "laptops with locked out vt"
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"Actually, not every dual core mobile processor supports VT. Here are the specs for the p7450 in the y450. http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLB54 [intel.com]
You'll notice there is no mention of VT support. But if you look at
Re:What? Malicious code?? (Score:5, Funny)
But Lenovo allows you to re-enable it. sony simply has a "SUCKS TO BE YOU" sticker on it.
Re:What? Malicious code?? (Score:4, Funny)
My experience as a Sys Admin and doing IT house calls told me to avoid Sony computers like the plague, unless i wipe the OS and start again. i found their tweaks to cause all kinds of headaches.
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It's Sony (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not like they've got a long history depicting a care for their customers, rootkits being only 1 example.
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It's not like they've got a long history depicting a care for their customers, rootkits being only 1 example.
lately, sony is the posterboy for 'do evil and lie about it'.
but they weren't always this way. 20 yrs ago they were the pinnacle of mid-fi consumer electronics. sometimes they even made high-end items but mostly they were comfortable making GOOD gear at an ok price.
fast forward to when sony got 'confused' about what business they are in: is it music software (and movies) or hardware that lets you w
"They" (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to characterize the modern Sony in any meaningfully consistent way is an exercise in futility. Sony, like any major Japanese company, has always existed in a number of fairly distinct units or "silos," but in their present incarnation, they are spread across such a wide variety of markets that it's almost a coincidence they bear the same brand name.
Sony BMG, obviously, is the most consumer-unfriendly, as well as the least market-savvy. The rootkit debacle of four years ago has stayed with the tech co
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That's funny, my 3-year old HP notebook gives me the choice to turn VT on or off, right there in the otherwise useless System Config.
Sony didn't just make it "harder" to enable, they've purposely removed the choice to do so. Enjoy your nerfed laptop, because Sony wants to protect the people buying $2500 laptops from their own rampant ignorance.
That sort of mentality is partially why so many geeks hate Sony with a passion. Sure, they make shiny products (that don't last), but the pervasive attitude is that
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Then start hating on Lenovo as well. They show you the option, but don't let you change it. I think you're just looking for ways to hate on Sony:
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=ideaPad&thread.id=11293&page=2 [lenovo.com]
I'm sure there are other manufacturers doing this as well.
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T. Sure, they make shiny products (that don't last), but the pervasive attitude is that they seem to think their customers are mind-blowingly stupid.
THEIR customers are.
And for nschubach, if Lenovo is starting down this path, then they will soon get the same hate that Sony does. Sony catches the flack for this sort of stuff before other companies because they have done this sort of thing repeatedly over the years. This doesn't let other companies off the hook, it just means that people aren't watching them as closely.
So thank you for pointing out that Lenovo is engaging in the same sort of behavior. They will now move up my list of companies to be v
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I'm glad someone appreciates the information... I was modded overrated and redundant on every other post pointing this out. Seems someone is trying to keep this firmly pointed at Sony.
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Don't get me wrong, people are mostly dumb, but not THAT dumb.
Given that people will happily buy $2000 laptops from Sony for $4500 [sonystyle.com], I'm not so sure about that.
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Disabling the feature by default IS a good idea as it DOES protect the OS from undetectable root kits (blue pill styley), i suppose as the bios can be attacked from a compromised OS disabling it completely could provide further protection (that is if you ignore the fact they can simply replace the bios with a new one)
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Preventing the customer from enabling the feature entirely (which is what Sony does) is NOT a good idea. I own a VAIO laptop that I do my work on. The fact that I had to buy it quickly and choose from several mediocre models (changing jobs, limited budget for home office) meant I had no opportunity to find ouot that VT was disabled and could NOT be turned on.
I'll never buy another Sony laptop again. There's no reason a 64-bit dual core laptop with 4 gigs of memory shouldn't be able to do good virtualization
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CD rootkits (Score:2, Funny)
They probably want to protect their customers from Rootkits that some manufacturers put on their CDs: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/31/2016223
flash (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, Sony has decided to disable the second core in many of its dual-core models. Senior douchebag Joe Schmo defended the decision, saying "Often the second core just allows people to run malware in the background without noticing it."
Um, no thanks, Sony. How about you let your customers decide whether they want to turn off processor features?
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hey, my mother was a douche bag, you insensitive clod.
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Surely, if their customers wanted it, Sony would give them the option. That's meant to be what's so good about our laissez-faire capitalist system!
The only possible conclusion is that Sony customers must not want choice.
Re:flash (Score:5, Informative)
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There is such a possibility, at least for some models! I own an SZ6 and I successfully flashed a slightly modified BIOS to enable VT - and it works just fine. You can also enable AHCI for the SATA controller, just ask Google for something like "SZ6 VT BIOS AHCI".
That's a great keylogger you got there, son
Why does it matter what the BIOS supports? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since DOS died the BIOS has been little more than a glorified POST. So why can't the OS just enable any features that the BIOS doesn't? Its not like any modern OS uses the BIOS once its up and running anyway - just some information the BIOS may have provided which the OS can double check for itself anyway.
Re:Why does it matter what the BIOS supports? (Score:5, Informative)
Since DOS died the BIOS has been little more than a glorified POST. So why can't the OS just enable any features that the BIOS doesn't? Its not like any modern OS uses the BIOS once its up and running anyway - just some information the BIOS may have provided which the OS can double check for itself anyway.
IIRC the BIOS sets the CPU VT flag on powerup (ie, disabled) - once flag is set, it can't be cleared until next cold boot. However, I have an SZ series, there are tools out there to modify the bios settings to not set the flag (it works), I've successfully got linux KVM running :D (following http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=189228)
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Yeah I was going to say, this sounds like a job for a hex editor, 10 minutes, and a guy who understands basic x86 assembly code.
Re:Why does it matter what the BIOS supports? (Score:5, Informative)
It matters because the way the VT tech works is that its disabled by default in the CPU, and is (usually) enabled by the BIOS. The reason you cant (usually) turn it on after the OS has booted is because the register used to turn it on (the MSR) has a lock-bit, which once set prevents any changes to the VT status until power is removed from the CPU.
BIOS's that simply ignore the VT enable stuff are less of a problem, because its possible to set the VT tech on, and lock it on (by writing 5 to register 3A) within the OS using /dev/msr (linux) or cpuinfo (windows). The Mac Pro (early 2008) behaves like this. This is obviously bad for security, as the malware can simply enable it!
BIOS's that deliberately disable VT will set the register to 1 (vt off, lock on), turning off, and locking off the VT stuff. There is no way I know of to defeat this situation (short of disassembling the BIOS and 'fixing' it).
Some BIOS's even have the code to turn it on, but it is only triggered if a CMOS register is set to a certain value and there is no UI on these BIOS's to set that CMOS register. I believe some Sony BIOSs are like this, but am unsure.
The best ones of course allow you to turn it on in the BIOS - which is why Sony are talking BS when they say its for security. They only need to ship it turned off, and allow the users to turn it on at their own risk.
I understand that it IS a genuine risk (bluepill?) in that a hypervisor can install itself UNDER the OS layer, and then filter what the OS sees, invisible to the user (otherwise the virtualization is broken).
Thats why.
ps. apple ignored a bug report I made about the way the Mac Pro works... i guess its kinda understandable because it seems all MacOS virtualization products just turn it on using the MSR as needed.
Pfft (Score:5, Funny)
::Sony BIOS SCREEN::
Virtualization: Disabled
Complimentary Rootkits: Enabled
his won't affect geeks running Linux and VMs... (Score:2, Insightful)
...because we already know Sony is evil as hell and we don't buy their laptops.
And anybody who went and forgot that lesson deserves whatever abuse Sony heaps on 'em.
Lenovo does the same thing (Score:4, Informative)
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Were they intentionally crippled, or just disabled by default? There's a big difference.
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VT extensions work with my T60p, though it's of course disabled by default in the BIOS (that is the sane default...)
It'd be lame as hell if T400's really couldn't enable it.
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I have a Thinkpad with a T9300 with VT enabled. Don't know about the 9400.
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incorrect, the T9400 does support Vt.
Intel Chips are massively hit-and-miss when it comes to Vt - I suggest checking wiki [wikipedia.org] before buying. I tried to find a laptop in the $1000 range with Vt support, hardware GPU (the graphics work I do requires about a class 3 GPU here [notebookcheck.net]), and at least 720p. You almost can't find it - either they have Vt or they have hardware GPU. I get discounts from Dell, Toshiba, and IBM, but by the time I specced them out to my minimum they were $300-500 over budget. I finally found a
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However, I read on various forums that people had the same issue and were unable to activate via BIOS. I have a Core2Duo T9400 2.5Ghz CPU.
Between virtual technology and Windows 7, it seems to me that a lot of people are going to "need" this soon, so disabling by default (if you have a choi
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I've never seen BIOS features password-protected from the factory. I have seen it FREQUENTLY done with corporate laptops (for example, the T42s I have for network testing have WLAN cards in them, but have been disabled in password-protected BIOS sections.)
Until Windows 7, 90%+ of consumers had no reason to use VT extensions, and for those, VT was only a potential security hole. Hence disabling by default made sense until very recently.
Add also Acer to the 'evil list' (Score:2)
For sure I will not buy anything from Acer. In addition to the VT %$%$$%-ing, the laptop VGA output it is not properly shielded because of poor design, and produces a signal with a bit of flickering (to get a digital DVI output you have in addition to spend over 125 € for a "Easyport IV" dock station).
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Are you sure? My T400 (bought year ago) have VT switch in BIOS from day one. My earlier z61t hadn't, and required over a year of email exchange to get VT toggle in new BIOS.
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What I can personally verify is the VT extensions are disabled. From what I saw on the Lenovo site, it's not possible to enable this without a non-existant upgraded BIOS. I can't explain why some people with T400's have
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I can't explain why some people with T400's have VT extensions enabled.
Linux BIOS Project? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Most of them can be re-enabled:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=345282 [notebookreview.com]
Linux BIOS Project is now Coreboot (Score:2, Informative)
Just an fyi, the LinuxBIOS project was renamed Coreboot [coreboot.org].
Legitimate reason ? (Score:2)
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In particular, with recent intel setups, intel's "Vpro" remote management widgetry depends on VT(and a bunch of other intel sauce). Disabling that is an excellent way to produce a line of systems that will appeal to individuals and smaller businesses, that you can sell cheaply to capture that cost sensitive demographic, that enterprise IT won't touch with a 10 fo
Let me fix that for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert stated that the QA engineers did this to make the systems more profitable by creating an artificial differentiation we can use to charge more money for basically the same thing."
That's how I read it too (Score:2)
Sounds like, if you want to use VT, they will sell you a "different" laptop model, for probably 25-50% higher price, which is the exact same laptop with a BIOS that doesn't disable this feature.
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Back in the early 1990s my then employer was a reseller of a non-PC server platform. The manufacturer sold two models with different processor options (386, 486 I believe), and each had the option for extra memory boards from 4MB to 32MB in capacity. The memory boards for the high-end machine cost around 4 times the price of those for the low-end model, although the specification was otherwise identical.
This hardware platform was discontinued, as the OS vendor moved to PC platforms. A few years later we ma
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I see someone here has absolutely no clue about the old Geforce 6 series - 6800 AGP had 16 pixel pipelines but only 12 were active, and it took a BIOS hack to get all pipelines active.
Not ALL 486SX processors were failures because of the FPU - some had a slightly fucked cache instead where only 3/4 of it was usable, the rest got locked. Some shit got locked even though it worked fine.
A faulty FPU would cause all sorts of noticable problems - odds are the FPU was fine.
go to hell Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
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anyone who buys a COMPUTER from sony deserves what they get.
what I'm guessing is that they locked the virtualization so that THEIR process is the root and all the user stuff is below that, not even knowing they are inside a VM.
sony is expert at rootkits. this all makes sense, in a disturbed sony kind of way.
"friends don't let friends buy sony". its never been more true.
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Well, I've got a Sony camera (P200, point and shoot) which stores images as JPG and videos as MPG and can transfer these to any platform without the need for drivers or software.
And what kind of memory card does this use? Nuff said..
I've also got a sony-ericsson phone which lets me copy any music files I want (i use mp3, not sure what other file types are supported) on to it and listen to them (via the admitedly annoying proprietary headphone adapter)
My point exactly..
Although Sony may use open formats for some of their software, what's exponentially more annoying is their use of proprietary hardware.
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Are there any companies that don't do this?
My Samsung camera doesn't. Hell, any company other than Sony doesn't. SD cards are pretty much the standard format for expandable flash memory. Any company that wishes to go against that standard is one I don't care to do business with.
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And the PS1/2/3 Fanboys? The sheeple that don't know any better? What about blu-ray? Sony is the main backing behind it...
I could give a fuck less about console systems that aren't upgradeable that go obsolete after a year or 2. As far as Blu-Ray...I'll never own one, especially when near-identical rips are available via the x264 codec and the awesome MKV container. I stopped fumbling with physical media once I discovered XBMC.
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"I stopped fumbling with physical media once I discovered XBMC."
I assume your hard disk counts as ethereal media, then?
Too easy.
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No, he stores his files on bittorrent.
When was the last time? (Score:2)
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You don't understand. They aren't protecting against a fault in the hardware; they're protecting against a feature in it. And this feature is not something that would only exist on a few machines. It exists on all modern Intel CPUs. The security community is concerned about this feature because it would allow rootkits/botnets to install in such a way that their detection is impossible via software. PoC code for such malware has been published, but we've yet to see it widely-used in the wild. That's only a m
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6 out of 11 is not "virtually every" (Score:4, Informative)
Only 6 out of 11 of the 45nm Core2 duo chips support VT according to info on intel.com. That's not "virtually every".
Not nitpicking for the sake of it, just don't want people to assume that the Core2 they're intending to buy supports VT. Best to check.
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Thanks for posting this, it's too bad it's not higher up the page. There will be a big backlash when people figure out Intel has been using this as a price point and only the premium laptop chips can run XP Mode. "Sorry, you only spent $800 on your laptop? Buh-bye."
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Actually, it isn't hard to get a Vt-x enabled chip for $800 or less - for instance, as of this moment a Gateway M-6750 is $440 according to Pricewatch and has a T5550 (a Vt supporting CPU according to wiki [wikipedia.org]), but it also has integrated graphics and I'm not sure if the motherboard used supports virtualization (if the graphical chipset matches the motherboard chipset, then no). I've found in general, for machines under $1000 you get an either or choice with Intel - either a Vt-x enabled CPU and integrated gra
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And in fact Sony did make Z series laptops with VT incompatible C2D chips (I know since my cousin has one) plus in some cases they used chipsets that do not support VT (or at least not easily with clever SMI hacking). I bet another concern is that buggy hardware on some of the Z series is made to work with System Management Mode (SMM) code in the BIOS, stuff that was never tested with VT.
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Sony has ALWAYS Gimped laptops... (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 2000, when Win2K was out and happy but the proles were stuck with Win98/ME, I decided I wanted a laptop.
There was a cheap Sony laptop with Win98/ME on it that looked good to me and was on sale. I checked, there was a version of the same laptop with Win2K available, but it was a few hundred dollars more if you could FIND it, and the UC CS dept had a site liscence/arrangement for Win2K.
So I figured, why not? Buy it at fry's, reinstall with a remotely tolerable Windows OS, be happy.
Get the laptop, blow away the Win98/ME crap, put on Win2K, only to find out that Sony locks all the drivers with BIOS strings and the like so the drivers from the Win2K version won't install on any other notebook, even when the chipsets and everything are identical!
Fortunately, Fry's had a good return policy. So rather than going hunting for manufacturer sites for drivers, I said, screw it, popped in the reimage disk, and restored it and returned it.
A few weeks later, I bought an IBM notebook off a friend with PowerBook envy, much prefering the IBM site wher you put in the model # on the bottom and you get every driver for every OS variant, including Linux, in a nice neat grid...
But even nearly a decade ago, Sony was gimping their laptops badly. Glad to see they are keeping THAT tradition alive...
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I think I speak for many of us when I say,
"F*ck you, Sony!".
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Dell's recovery CDs, however, are typically just OEM images of the OS included with the machine. They include all the extra software on another disc -- so if the automated recovery doesn't work on a Dell, just fire up the disc.
Lost your disc? No problem, because Dell will ship you a new one [dell.com] free of charge once per computer.
Contrast this with Sony, who doesn't ship recovery discs AT ALL, sometimes even without the Acer option to burn your own recovery discs -- which few people do anyways. Then, if you want t
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The only thing that makes it an OEM OS is the
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Well that usually because if the partition tables are different youy've probably blown away the recovery partition on the Dell Hard Drive. It is not actually an unreasonable response for the recovery system to take.
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disclaimer: I used to work for Sony.
That said, NEVER, EVER buy a Sony laptop.
They intentionally make it difficult/impossible to change the operating system. while they could never get away with building machines that die after 3 years, they do essentially this by forcing you to buy a new machine when a new OS ships. and good luck finding up-tp-date drivers for the various built-in devices.
a typical conversation I've had about this:
THEM: look at this new Sony laptop, it's so shiny! should i get it?
ME: no
THEM
Ever notice all bad decisions (Score:2)
Not virtually all C2D's (Score:3, Informative)
AMD vs. Intel (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of cheap Intel processors don't even have Intel VT, while most of the AMD processors in the same price range have it enabled. While I like the fact that some of the new Pentium processors run really cool, I would never consider buying a new processor without virtualization support. Yet most of the current cheap machines (laptops and boxen) that come with Intel use processors without virtualization. Kinda limits your choices. But then again I always liked AMD better.
Toshiba too (Score:2)
Toshiba does this on some of their laptops, too, including mine, as I discovered recently. It's there as a bios option, but no way to change it from "disabled".
I hope Toshiba decides to provide an update to re-enable the VT, but so far they haven't made a statement about it at all, AFAIK.
Cell Phones All Over Again (Score:2)
Now as to why Sony will enable it on some laptops, yet not others, truly boggles the mind.
Perhaps... (Score:3, Funny)
Perhaps there is already some hypervisor running that we don't know about?
As a Z owner who is planning on upgrading to Windows 7, this pisses me off. That machine was nearly as expensive as my mac... my mac!
It's worth noting that, scarily enough, it *was* still cheaper than my MBP, and the MBP has all sorts of issues running Windows. Sadly, the one ideal computer to run all OS's is actually three and a roll of duct tape.
No Vaio for me (Score:2)
Even models that are supposed to support this mode. Why take the chance?
The question no one is asking... (Score:3, Insightful)
If Sony is disabling features to make their laptops more resiliant against malware attacks, can we expect them to offer support and resolution to malware attacks that occur because of their hardware/BIOS?
I bet not. So why not leave alone that which you are not willing to fully support anyways?
On another note, Intel (amd probably AMD) mess with the VT features, scattering them all over the processor product lines. You need a frakking CPA to work through the permutations and find the processor(s) that have all the features and performance you want or will pay for. !Simple. !Friendly. Evil.
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Virtual Box will still run without VT, it just won't be optimal. I've got an old Athlon 64 that doesn't support VT or its AMD equivalent, but I can still run a Windows XP Virtual Box instance on it ;)
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yep - Virtualbox uses QEMU [qemu.org] if Vt-x or AMD-V isn't present. I've got a year old Quad-Core 8400 that doesn't support Vt-x because Intel doesn't include it in consumer grade chips (I made sure my laptop had it, though). I think this is going to bite Intel's ass just like the Intel GMA graphics thing did when they used a software timer and Vista Aero required a hardware timer.
sony made wrong decision (Score:4, Funny)
Virtual machines are a security feature. A VM establishes a security barrier around the OS> If you're infected, you just roll back the VM to the last snapshot and you're clean.
Security is like sex, once you're penetrated you're ****ed. Blocking useful security tools because they make it very slightly easier to hide after a successful penetration is asinine. And complaining about the cleanup cost? I normally reformat and reinstall after a virus is detected... and I've had to do that ONCE on any computer I've owned since 1986.
If people took some responsibility for their computers instead of depending on hacks like AV software to detect and clean up after they screw up, there wouldn't BE a virus problem.
As for your last line, "There is no real use of VT anyway since cores are now dual."... I have no idea what you mean by that, so here's a bunny with a pancake on its head [wordpress.com].
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Here's some more evidence that the "Apple Tax" is just a higher price for quality goods:
http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/08/07/macs-beat-pcs-intel-vt/ [aconcreter...acsbeatpcs]