Share your experience!
I have purchased a Vaio SVS15112C5E which was supplied with Windows 8 by Sony
Two questions:
1. Does Sony enforce any Hardware warranty impact if I replace Win 8 Pro with Windows 7 Pro ?
2. Will the drivers be available for Windows 7 for this model, or can one assume that the Win8 drivers will be backward compatible?
Anyone know?
As far as I am aware there is no hardware warranty implication with downgrading to Windows 7 but if you did need to make a claim Sony would require that you returned the machine to ‘as delivered’ as only the original OS is supported.
Sony is not supporting downgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 7 on any model and unless corporate purchasers kick up a fuss then this is unlikely to change. Most Windows 8 drivers are not backwardly compatible but if you can find Windows 7 drivers for a model of the same series with identical specifications then this may work.
There are SVS1511 models released in summer of 2012 with Win 7 preinstalled – check the support site for specifications and drivers.
Rich
Having the same problem / question...
I already tried to download some drivers from SVS1511C5E which seem to work with the SVS15112C5E.
But irritating is that an original windows 7 dvd is not detected by the bios and I'm unable to boot from it. Only by changing the bios from UEFI to "normal" and disabling the secure boot I was able to boot from dvd. But on the dvd (windows 7 64bit) is a UEFI folder and microsoft itself says its better to use UEFI than normal bios when using windows 7 64bit and / or SDD...
Very interested if Sony is willing to make windows 7 drivers available...