Further analysis of the Sony VAIO problems has led me to believe the best possible disposition of such a machine is to encase it in several feet of cement and drop it into the Pacific ocean somewhere near the Marianas Trench. The second best option (not nearly as much fun, however) would be to dig up an ancient DOS boot disk, use fdisk to wipe the master boot record, repartition, format, and install Windows 98. Then, track down and install a few device drivers. Nah, couldn’t be that easy, could it?