The Firmware Page

Though certainly one of the less consumer-friendly CE giants, Sony’s VGN-CR490 or the new CR590 laptops have most of
the features I need. But one thing I definitely do NOT want is Windows Vista Business. Not only does it impose DRM
locks, but it bogs down the processor and RAM without offering any features I find the least bit valuable. No wonder
Dell, HP and Lenovo still offer XP Pro on their business laptops. The CR490 and CR590 came with Vista Business pre-installed. And Sony gives no option for choosing XP Professional.

As you may know, Microsoft announced that all those with Vista Business pre-installed are entitled to the XP Pro downgrade. Of course, any OS is useless without the correct hardware drivers. But checking www.esupport.sony.com
of the countless dozens of VAIO notebooks, Sony provides XP Pro drivers for only two VAIO models. Needless to say, neither of these two models were on that tiny list. And calling Sony tech support, I was told there were no plans to issue drivers for those laptops.

It's your basic Catch-22 situation: I dare not buy CR590 without reasonable assurance that ALL drivers to run XP Pro on it
are available. And without the laptop in my possession, I can’t run any kind of driver hardware ID software to determine what generic or third party drivers may enable XP Pro to fully communicate with all its hardware. So does anyone know for a fact that all drivers to run XP Pro on either or both the Sony VGN-CR490 and CR590 are available?

If unknown, I hope someone owning either of these two laptops would go to www.driveragent.com and load their free
and safe program. If yes, then please let me know if the program can identify all the laptop’s drivers. If it can, then there’s
a fairly good chance that this website’s drivers will let XP Pro properly run on either the VGN-CR490 or the CR590.

Right, VGN-CR490 is an awesome model.
All important drivers exist and are operational: Chipset, Graphics, Audio, Memory card reader, ethernet, integrated modem, webcam. I didn't see any added value in installing the touchpad driver but only an overhead, I didn't tried the modem (but it installed successfully).
All these drivers can be downloaded from their respective manufacturers except for the webcam, which is meant for another Sony laptop model but works like a charm.

I have all the drivers available, just give a shout:

Before reinstalling, backup the C:\InstantON directory which is the world record booting multimedia player accessible (from Off mode) using the "AV MODE" button.
On a fresh install (XP or Vista), if they install, none of Sony proprietary tools will be functional, except "Camera Capture". Some install but still no functionality! We can make some work with lot of work around but still it's not brilliant! These tools are "Sony Shared Library", "Vaio Control Center", "Vaio Power Management", "Sony Notebook Utilities"... Anyway all these tools are an overhead for so little functionlity: what's really interresting (to me) is the Fn + brightness buttons.

Actually the first day I got the laptop (Vista Home Premium) I did a Sony Update and a Windows Update. The next day the laptop didn't boot (NTLDR issue blah bla blah) so I installed a XP at reach.

Later I re-installed a fresh Vista Home Premium but since it's not a pure OEM install by Sony, bits are missing so that more things fail working compared to XP: the webcam can't install, all Sony proprietary software won't work or install !!!
On a fresh vista or XP install, Sony Update manager wouldn't recognize the model!
Buttons can work on Vista with lot of work around but I've not been able to make them work on XP yet!

However I find that Vista Home Premium is not too slow compared to XP on this model and would like to come back to Vista.
To do this and due to the Vista crash I experienced, all I need is a recovery CD/DVD
If you own a CR-490, I need a copy of your Recovery CD/DVD, thanks to contact me (email above)!
If you don't know how to create a recovery DVD, I'll explain it to you.

To sum-up, on a fresh XP install, the Fn + brightness won't work. That's the only drawback.
On a fresh Vista Hoem Premium (and that's more worrying since it's officially the only OS supported by Sony) the camera doesn't work, the Fn + brightness buttons can work but it's not straightforward.
On Vista Ultimate, don't even think of installing Vista Home Premium drivers!

Regarding Sony PCG-5K1L aka VGN-CR490 drivers for XP; I muddled through getting it working. Started with downloading the XP wireless driver off sony asia site for VGN-CR3xx . That worked and got me networked (if that had failed I would have installed my USB wireless adaptor). Then I could run driver analysis tools off the WWW. Ran the free http://www.ma-config.com/en/services/60 ... ivers.html (sure beats the sites that want $30 !!) ... and got a full print out of my hardware plus a few drivers; if the download links are dead, note the filenames and google (worked for me in one case). Then ran the free driver analysis tool off intel.com (in hindsight, might have been best to start there): http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect?iid=dc_iduu . It failed on one driver; which was a vista version (they must have a bug in their database given that it showed I was looking for XP drivers). But I have working display and graphics accelerator, audio and wireless. Some problem with camera and wired LAN. But OK, I can live with that until I can afford an upgrade to Win 7.

To sum all this up, you have been cheated by a manufacturer called Sony.

It would be too easy for you to use Linux ?!?

Yes we've been cheated (I avoid Sony because of their limited drivers support) but Linux is not the solution to everything: at that time it was workable by experienced users only.
Indeed back in 2009 support for Intel 4965AGN was a nightmare: there was 2 driver models, none of which integrated into the kernel mainstream, at the end of the day it required recompiling the kernel, the driver utilities, and finding the right firmware.

Appart from this (a newbie could be happy with ethernet only), Linux isn't a drop-in replacement for Windows, even though it provides the basics (desktop, notepad, system tools...). However many apps don't exist in Linux (and will never), in particular games and office (please don't mention openoffice).
There are workarounds (wine/winex, virtualization,...) but they need some technical knowledge... at the end of the day if you want to get the best out of your linux you have to have technical knowledges.

-sayang

Games are no apps, whatever you say.

If you cannot deal with Linux then its your problem.... and if you bought crap hardware and di nothing about it then no one can help you.