I’ve been a Sony Vaio laptop user for something like six years or more now. Last week, I purchased the third — and last — Vaio I will ever own. Interestingly, I had no significant choice in making the purchase. And now that I’ve made it, I find my choices are even further limited.

The Vaio I purchased is the VGN SZ460N. It’s a very pretty computer; even prettier than the VGN SZ140P I owned for just over a year prior to being forced into this purchase. And I really loved the SZ140P. So when it unexpected died one day last week, I was quite distressed.

My distress wasn’t helped by the fact that I was in the middle of several significant court cases. (I’m an attorney.) And I was approximately one week out from speaking as on gang defense to a large group of attorneys.

Once I realized there was no hope of resurrecting the old Vaio, I immediately turned to thinking of a replacement. Several people tried talking me into other models, such as HP. How I wish I’d listened!

Instead, I considered the fact that I had two power supplies for the SZ140P, two docking stations and that I’d just spent all this money on that system barely over a year previously.

Well, even though it was an emergency situation, I probably should have researched a little further. I bought the SZ460N even though it came with Windows Vista Business, thinking that if I didn’t like it, I’d just install Windows XP Professional.

No such luck. Sony states that they refuse to support Windows XP on the SZ460N, and from what I can tell searching the Internet, it’s quite difficult to install a working version of XP even if you decide “to hell with what the Sony support people say.” Well, I have a response for Sony.

This is my last Vaio. I love the form factor. I love the way it handled XP on my last one. I hate that Sony insists you can only use Vista on new laptops. I tried talking to their support and they said they will not support anything less than Vista. Period. End of story. I told them I’d probably never buy another Vaio and you probably know the response by now: “Well, that’s up to you, sir.” In other words, “Go fuck yourself. We don’t need your business.”

If Sony doesn’t want to satisfy the needs of its loyal customers anymore, then only a fool would remain a loyal customer of Sony.