Hands on: Boost your laptop's performance

Sony explains that these drivers are “intended to provide basic system functionality under Windows XP”.

It adds “because these computers are optimised for use with Windows Vista, some functionality will be lost under Windows XP”.

For example, some function keys and special buttons may not work properly, while the battery life may not be as good.

We decided to ‘downgrade’ our own Sony Vaio TZ series laptop to see how XP compares with Vista on this popular ultraportable model.

Installing XP on a laptop
Installing Windows XP on a laptop is essentially no different from installing it on a desktop.

You’ll boot from the XP CD, install it on the desired partition then, once complete, install the required drivers for the various devices.

Since your laptop may not have access to the internet straight away, it’s a good idea to download the drivers using another system first and copy them either on to a CD or a Flash memory key for easy access.

And since the ‘downgrade’ will involve wiping the hard disk, it goes without saying that you should back up important data before proceeding.

Our test laptop was a Sony Vaio TZ150N, bought in the US, and searching for it under the drivers and software section of Sony’s support website brought up a full list of downloadable options for Vista Business and XP. Filtering the list for XP listed 32 drivers and utilities ­ we downloaded and copied them to a USB memory key.

With the drivers downloaded, we inserted the Windows XP CD into the laptop, restarted and began the Windows setup process; if your CD doesn’t automatically start, enter your Bios settings and set the optical drive as the first boot device.

After Windows completed its setup process, we installed the downloads one by one, starting with a Bios update followed by the chipset and graphics drivers, before working through the others. Sony advises doing these in a certain order and provides a list to follow. The process went smoothly.

After installing the Intel graphics drivers for instance, Windows Device Manager still showed a couple of exclamation marks against VGA devices, but pointing these towards the downloaded Intel folder gave them the information they were looking for.

Likewise, a couple of unidentified base components were happy when fed the Sony drivers for the Memory Stick and SD card slots, while the Realtek audio was satisfied with a further download from Windows update.

Windows XP also thought it had correctly identified the built-in webcam during the initial setup process, but unfortunately it didn’t work with Microsoft’s drivers. Installing Sony’s own camera driver, though, did the trick.

Finally we installed the Sony utilities, including those for power management and anti-shock hard disk support. The entire process took just less than three hours.

Was it worth it?
Before performing any formal tests, the laptop felt much quicker and responsive under Windows XP than it had with Vista.

In terms of performance, the laptop previously took one minute and nine seconds from cold power-up to the Vista login screen, and a further five minutes after logging in before the disk activity slowed to point of usability. So from cold power-up to productivity with the default configuration, you were looking at about six minutes in total.