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Yea, this is just a Lenovo X200 w/ libreboot. The same old laptop that's been around for years and years, now with a crappy sticker over the windows key! http

Yea, this is just a Lenovo X200 w/ libreboot. The same old laptop that's been around for years and years, now with a crappy sticker over the windows key! http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/x200.html http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/x200.html

buffoon 11y ago
You forgot the ridiculous price tag for a refurb X200. My stacked X201 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb Samsung 840 pro, new 9-cell, ultrabase with DVDRW, keyboard, mouse, 22" TFT cost about the price of their bottom end model in total (via ebay) I assume it hasn't got a hard disk in it as well as they are technically standalone computers with closed source firmware as well these days. Freedom is expensive.
- jordigh 11y ago
  > Freedom is expensive. I'm willing to pay that price for owning something that I know cannot spy on me, does not have remote kill switches I can't control, and is completely serviceable from bottom to top by any third party. It really is sad that these requirements are now expensive. They used to be taken for granted.
  - Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
    But if there's one thing we learnt the last few years, it's that we were never able to take those things for granted in the first place. You were never free of threat of spyware or kill switches. If anything, we have gotten much better at security than ever before.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      Security from whom? Malware has always been fairly easy to avoid as a consumer. Built-in backdoors? What do you do about that?
    - yuhong 11y ago
      Intel ME is relatively new, but it is also probably worth noting that it does not phone home until software asks it to be activated.
userbinator 11y ago
http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/gm45_remove_me.html http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/gm45_remove_me.html Worth nothing that the ME could be disabled/removed on the GM45; perhaps there are undocumented ways to do this on the newer chipsets too, although Intel would probably consider that a "security vulnerability"...
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  The ability to disable ME on GM45 was known for years. It's just that these guys didn't believe it and fought extra hard to rediscover it. All options to disable ME (there are a few) on newer devices are totally impractical, if for nothing else, because it disables certain power management capabilities. If you like to fry eggs on your laptop, that may be the way to go though.

buffoon 11y ago

You forgot the ridiculous price tag for a refurb X200. My stacked X201 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb Samsung 840 pro, new 9-cell, ultrabase with DVDRW, keyboard, mouse, 22" TFT cost about the price of their bottom end model in total (via ebay) I assume it hasn't got a hard disk in it as well as they are technically standalone computers with closed source firmware as well these days. Freedom is expensive.

jordigh 11y ago
> Freedom is expensive. I'm willing to pay that price for owning something that I know cannot spy on me, does not have remote kill switches I can't control, and is completely serviceable from bottom to top by any third party. It really is sad that these requirements are now expensive. They used to be taken for granted.
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 11y ago
  But if there's one thing we learnt the last few years, it's that we were never able to take those things for granted in the first place. You were never free of threat of spyware or kill switches. If anything, we have gotten much better at security than ever before.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    Security from whom? Malware has always been fairly easy to avoid as a consumer. Built-in backdoors? What do you do about that?
  - yuhong 11y ago
    Intel ME is relatively new, but it is also probably worth noting that it does not phone home until software asks it to be activated.

userbinator 11y ago

http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/gm45_remove_me.html http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/gm45_remove_me.html Worth nothing that the ME could be disabled/removed on the GM45; perhaps there are undocumented ways to do this on the newer chipsets too, although Intel would probably consider that a "security vulnerability"...

pgeorgi 11y ago
The ability to disable ME on GM45 was known for years. It's just that these guys didn't believe it and fought extra hard to rediscover it. All options to disable ME (there are a few) on newer devices are totally impractical, if for nothing else, because it disables certain power management capabilities. If you like to fry eggs on your laptop, that may be the way to go though.