Sony to offer XP Pro on AMD notebooks

THE AMD VERSION of the Sony Vaio will shortly support Windows XP Pro, a small victory for the chip company in gaining corporate acceptance for its mobile chips.

The Intel-based Vaio family come with a choice of Windows 2000, XP Pro, or whatever an end user wants, but Sony had restricted the AMD notebook to being supplied with XP Home.

That indicated it thought that AMD mobile chip users were likely to be home, rather than professional users.

However, Sony has now told a customer - a reader of the INQUIRER - that it will shortly offer XP Professional on AMD-based machines, an indication that demand for this operating system is greater than expected.

In a support note, a representative told him: " The FXA notebook series have the AMD Athlon 4 proccessors with Windows XP Home as the operating system. I am sure very soon these notebooks will be upgraded with the Windows XP Pro operating system. You can have a look at the FXA models here: http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/fxaseries/index.shtml." µ