I inherited a Sony Vaio in 2009 which was really slow with windows, but unsurprisingly was ok once I swapped that out for Ubuntu 9.04.
Took me a while to get the brightness up as the buttons didn't respond, but I kept that machine running for 7 years, the HDD controller died in the end so it stopped detecting any HDD.
It's a pet project of some right wing sleaze bag uncle, subsidized by the government while whale watching makes a mountain of cash. Complete idiocy. Hopefully this will be the end of it.
ermm... Not unheard of. Knut Hamsun(Norwegian writer) gave his nobel price to Joseph Goebbels in '43?