Heads up: Sony VAIO older driver and software downloads ending on March 01, 2018

[hasefroch]

This may be relevant for those of you that have computers / laptops that shipped with windows vista or earlier:

Dear Valued Customers,

Please be informed that Sony's support has ended for VAIO computers which were shipped with the following Microsoft Windows operating systems preinstalled:

• Windows 95
• Windows 98
• Windows 98 SE
• Windows ME
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista

As of March 1, 2018, we will no longer provide drivers and software for download for these computers.

So get what drivers need before end of this month, or get rid of windows forever...

https://sony-paa-pa-en-web--paa.cust...wnloads-ending

[momaka]

Re: Heads up: Sony VAIO older driver and software downloads ending on March 01, 2018

Thanks for the heads up!

I do have one oldschool Sony Vaio laptop (with a desktop Pentium 4, LOL) that has Windows XP. I never really use it , but I suppose it might be worthwhile getting the drivers for it in case I reinstall its OS.

[stj]

Re: Heads up: Sony VAIO older driver and software downloads ending on March 01, 2018

they should still host the bioses and manuals - or put them on a FTP.
of course they wont - because they are sony!!

[momaka]

Re: Heads up: Sony VAIO older driver and software downloads ending on March 01, 2018

Yeah Sony, don't care about keeping legacy stuff. But it's not only them. HP and somewhat recently Dell have also cluster-fucked their websites to a point where you can't find anything for legacy hardware. As a result, those driver scanner/updater websites have grown really big. It's rather hard to find old drivers for OEM machines nowadays. That said, some of the smaller motherboard manufacturers like Biostar and Jetway have been pretty awesome about keeping legacy drivers and manuals on their website - for Biostar in particular, you can find even drivers for their Windows 9x -era boards. The big guys (ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI) have surprisingly also been okay for the most part with keeping old drivers on their sites.

But in any case, I now keep a backup of many things I find on the internet if they are useful, because you never know when someone will take those resources down. I also don't trust "the cloud" to store my stuff. Everything is either on HDDs or burned on optical media (and sometimes both).

[stj]

Re: Heads up: Sony VAIO older driver and software downloads ending on March 01, 2018

best company's for archiving are IBM, although it's hard to find, and FIC (First International Computer)

FIC move all old stuff to a perpetual FTP and leave it forever.

[momaka]

Re: Heads up: Sony VAIO older driver and software downloads ending on March 01, 2018

Adapter is another one.
Doesn't matter if you are looking for some very obsolete RAID controller or fairly new one. It's all on their website and nicely organized, with manuals, info, and everything you need to know. Moreover, the website is mostly plain HTML with very few (if any) scripts. It runs smoothly on any PC made in the last 15 years - unlike Dell's and HP's websites, which are so bogged down with scripts and "active" content.