Congrats on getting a workable mobile computer!
An OEM installation can be made to work if you want ot put the effort in, I'd spend a day or so trying then removing everything you're not sure about, then run ccleaner to get rid of extra registry stuff, run windows update and get a worthwhile antivirus (like AVG free) on there, run ccleaner again just for good measure, then image an "initial setup" out to DVDs or a hard disk with a product like Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost.
Sony includes a lot of stuff on their machines, and if you try to reinstall with the Sony disks and fake it out into not installing everything, the machine asks for the disks to reinstall everything just about every time you reboot. Annoying, to say the least.
Reinstalling with a retail or generic OEM copy of Vista or XP is also an option if you can find all of the proper drivers for the machine.
An OEM installation can be made to work if you want ot put the effort in, I'd spend a day or so trying then removing everything you're not sure about, then run ccleaner to get rid of extra registry stuff, run windows update and get a worthwhile antivirus (like AVG free) on there, run ccleaner again just for good measure, then image an "initial setup" out to DVDs or a hard disk with a product like Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost.
Sony includes a lot of stuff on their machines, and if you try to reinstall with the Sony disks and fake it out into not installing everything, the machine asks for the disks to reinstall everything just about every time you reboot. Annoying, to say the least.
Reinstalling with a retail or generic OEM copy of Vista or XP is also an option if you can find all of the proper drivers for the machine.