Why is it disabled in the present VAIOs? Is this a black helicopter issue, or are there believable practical reasons?

Paris, because she'd have written _something_ on the reasoning behind this decision.

"No demand" http://www.virtualization.info/2009/08/sony-explains-why-it-disabled-intel-vt.html

and as such they are arrogant assholes who hold their own customers in contempt. They probably see it as a means to extract more cash from the poor saps who buy their crap by charging a premium for machines that have that *extra* capability.

Other than that there is no valid reason for them to act the way they are.

Of course the simple solution is to never buy Sony products. Ever.

It works for me!

Evil Gates 'cause the MS evilness is spreading!

I want to know why it is disabled too. Even if it is trivial to reenable it I still want to know why it was disabled in the first place. I managed to reenabled it on my VGN-AR630E but this still feels sleezy and I don't think I will buy anymore Sony products.

Its black helicopter issue. In an earlier post about this Sont had said that "having Vt enabled in BIOS would be too much of a security issue to the customer to allow this."

Total horseshit if you ask me but cant blame a company for trying to pad the bottomline....oh wait yes you can when they say stupid shit like that. My Bad.

"Lauwaert said Sony had been taken by surprise by the level of demand for VT, and - again - he committed Sony to supporting VT in Vaios in future. But - again - he was unable to say when this would happen."

That statement is all I ever needed to confirm my already low opinion of Sony laptops.

I have managed to work them off the approved purchasing list off every company I have ever worked for and will now have even more ammunition in future. Thanks for the assistance Sony.

Disabled so they can release a new line of Vaio's with it enabled. Ohh you want virtualisation? here you go, buy a new Vaio...we turned it off on your old one to force you into an upgrade :P

This seems to be another issue like MP expenses where the fix they wanted was to stop people finding out rather than cleaning up their act.

Why on earth would you turn this feature off?? The last Vaio I had wasn't cheap at about £1,800 -- if I wanted a laptop right now I'd expect it to allow system development and testing across OSes. Rather than provide clarity, I'd want a fix and cast iron assurance that the processor advertised hasn't been crippled. This looks a bit like when Intel turned off defective 486 DX co-pros to sell the chips as cheaper SX parts: inferior hardware but without the "cheaper" bit.

Sorry Sony, you were the only PC manufacturer I'd have considered if I'd fallen out with my Mac. Fortunately I haven't, and all its bits do work as advertised, so I'll stick here for now.

I'm old enough to remember when Sony was feted as a maker of nicely-priced, technologically adept gear, (I've got a DiscMan, super slimline Walkman and original model PS2 all going strong). Now they appear to be pursuing the opposite - poor products at premium prices.

Intel VT appears to work fine on my second-hand Dell D620 - which I bought specifically because I _needed_ VT support (it's a VMware Server host that I use for test and development). So I'm at a loss to understand why Sony can't get it working - unless there's a commercial, rather than technical, reason for the omission. (Black helicopter icon goes here)

How the mighty have fallen... :'(

Think Sony's explanation was that having a mode avaialble that was invisible to the OS + any virus checkers etc was seen to be dangerous .... they have a point - after all that's what everyone was complaining about when Sony used a rootkit for copy protection etc. and how opening up the ability to run code that was invisible to the OS was likely to result in the imminent end of civilization

Reading the EFI hack from the article we are talking about a single bit setting here.

Sony have no excuse and no justification for announcing not immediate announcing the release in x months time of a new bios/efi version where this bit is enabled. Even with significant Testing this shouldnt take that long.

Anything else is completely unacceptable.

This is just typical of Sony. Crap overpriced hardware that fails, and doesn't do what it's supposed to, or what you paid for it to do.

PS1 = Fail, laser and spindle cheapness

PS2 = Even bigger fail with the same laser problems as the original, that looks like a heatsink out of an industrial machine!

PS3 = Same issues as the above two, shaped like a casket, and slow.

Vaio = Crap Mac lookalike that fails unexpectedly (I know, I'm a PC technician). The only good thing is the DC Jack is on a plug for replacement.

Sony Batteries = Junk that explodes

The only thing going for Sony with me is some of their audio products. Sound quality and battery life (provided you're not using THEIR batteries)

Sony seems to have a lot of worshippers, like Apple. Why, is beyond me. In fact the two companies are becoming similar, style over substance. I'd rather have substance over style, something that isn't wafter thin, but still does what I want it to, and doesn't explode.

Having owned a Vaio, which shortly after the warranty coverage expired suffered a hard disk controller failure, the simple way to avoid being short changed on VT is to buy a computer from someone else!

Maybe Sony will get the hint after having gone to great lengths to disable VT, reducing the functionality their intended customers are expected to pay for. There is plenty of competition in the laptop market and Sony demands a premium for its 'fashion' element. If you want to look cool with a laptop, buy an Apple but if you want a grunty Windows machine go for something other than Sony. Let their arrogance cost them dearly.

Even Apple enables VT on their computers. Interesting that a Mac will run Windows 7 in XP mode when a Vaio can't...

If I buy a computer that has a certain chipset (VT Capable),

with Windows (VT Capable),

...and sONY DIS-ABLES IT...

then they sold a defective item,

and SHORT-CHANGED THEIR CUSTOMERS IN THE WALLET,

THEY SHOULD PAY!!!!

I'm tired of paying for products that are RE-CONFIGURED to what they think you should be able to do, instead of what the software and hardware was designed to do.

Sony thought ROOT-KITS were OK TOO!!!

(they still owe me for that one,

and my MD RECORDER will not work either...

Vista issues...like they did not see it coming...DUH...

SONY HAS SCREWED THEIR CUSTOMERS AGAIN & AGAIN.

>>>SCREW THEM TO THE WALL!!!!!<<<