Before this, this model was supposedly not backward compatible and I had settled for a lifetime of Vista, but then Sony published some drivers for Windows XP early this year I think (At least they learn!), so the downgrading process was relatively painless, although a couple of files were missing and I had to look for them myself.
Here's a short walkthrough for those who intend to the same as I do.
- Backup all the data on your machine. I tried to make a recovery media kit from Vista, but after destroying two perfectly innocent DVDRs I decided, fuck it all, I'm never ever going back to Vista anyway! But even if in the unlikely event that I do, I could probably go back to Sony Service Centre and ask them to restore Vista for me.
- Download drivers and applications for Windows XP from here. Put them in a thumb drive so you can plug them into your machine later.
- While installing the drivers, I found that the wireless LAN driver (2) does not work, and also I was unable to use the Fn. key to tweak the volume, brightness and etc. Therefore, to save you the hassle later, download these files - Wireless LAN driver and Sony Notebook Utilities and put them in your thumb drive as well.
- Commence installation of Windows XP from a bootable CD. If you've done reformatting before, it's the same. Here's a writeup from Sony if you need it.
- After XP is successfully installed, just plug in your thumb drive, extract all the files from the previously downloaded drivers and applications, and install one by one. I did them according to the order of the list that they gave, and also the extra two files later.
- Install Microsoft Office, Acrobat Reader, antivirus etc. as needed.
