Sony VAIO and Visa Home Premium

[Jay]

Yesterday I got my brand new SONY VAIO laptop, its very nice in almost every way, except how they setup Windows Vista.

When I first booted into Windows I noticed the usual array of crap that pre built laptops always have pre-installed, one being Google desktop and side bar. To me Google desktop is useless so I decided, along with a load of other crap, to uninstall it and use the Vista side bar. All went well and Google desktop uninstalled but after a few reboots I noticed that the Vista sidebar had not loaded. I went to control panel to activate it but was greeted with a nice message telling me that it had been disabled by the administrator.

After a 10 minutes of searching the net I found a few other people who also had Sony VAIO laptops saying the same thing and the only way they found to fix this was to edit the registry, this also worked for me.

I have come to the conclusion that Sony had disabled a part of Windows Vista to try and force you to use Google desktop and any novice user would have never been able to correct the problem Sony had deliberately introduced into the their Windows Vista setup.

I think this is way out of line, disabling parts of a program I had paid for!

[vinnyT]

Your right, it's out of line.

I think the worrying/vexing thing for me is the "message telling me that it had been disabled by the administrator", this suggests that someone, presumably a sony worker, has admin privilidges over your LT (I know that the Co.s have back door routes to use if a machine comes into the workshop), not only this, but these privalidges seem to override yours in the running of the LT.

Odd.

Very nice laptops though.