Quote Originally Posted by bdeli
You might be lucky if the BIOS will fix it, but from my experience and all research I made it seems that it is more of a hardware problem.
Just an update - indeed I was lucky! I loaded the new BIOS, and the VAIO has been cookin' just fine ever since. So, those of you with VAIOs who are getting depressed reading this thread, be sure and check for updates and fixes from Sony before you assume the worst.

I'm glad it turned out this way, because I think the VAIO (at least the one I have) is a really nice box, which fell victim to some haphazard patching from Redmond. (gotta' be a first time for everything, right?) I'll pass along what I read here, but based on my experience, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend VAIO again.