I got a shiny new Vaio VGN SZ390P at the beginning of the week. Labeled in shiny letters on the front that it was Windows Vista Capable.

So just for fun I installed Vista Enterprise and started to play. It quickly because obvious that apart from the camera driver they didn't have much in the way of specific driver or application support either bundled in the Vista release or available to add back in.

So I dropped them a line inquiring about scheduled availability of Vista versions of the drivers and applications that were supplied with the pre-configured machine. I was hoping for a response along the lines of "these will be generally available mid January to coincide with the retail launch of Windows Vista, but here's a link to some beta versions if you're happy to test"....

What I got was rather different and not very comforting:

Thank you for contacting Sony Online Support.

Once Microsoft has officially released their Windows Vista operating system for retail sales, if your computer was labeled by Sony with the official "Windows Vista Capable" logo, Sony may choose to provide limited basic device Drivers for the Windows Vista operating system for your model. Should any updates be released for use on your model, a Windows Vista support link will be available on your Model Specific support Website. However, if a Windows Vista support link is not available, or active on your model specific site, Sony has not released any updates to support Windows Vista for your model.

Right now... that list is very empty.

Update 1/31/07: Kudos to Sony... the drivers and updates are now available on their site.

Now, maybe I'm giving them too much credit but with the retail launch about a month away at this point (and enterprise customers taking delivery already) the fact that their support folks can't give me a straight answer as to what's going to be available and when is a bit of a worry. Sure their labs and their product management may have this well in hand but Vista hasn't just sprung up out of left field... it's been in Beta for quite a while now and there are a lot of other suppliers who are on the ball and have drivers available - some fully released and some still in beta, but HP and Toshiba (for instance) for a lot of their current model hardware have very clear statements (and pretty obvious links straight to the info from HP, Toshiba and Dell)

Maybe I'm being overly harsh but given some of my previous experiences with Sony and their level commitment to providing support for existing customers I fear I may be in for a long wait...