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I'm not arguing about the voting scheme, and it's impossible to reconstruct what that thread looked like while it was active. It's also not about Microsoft's sh

I'm not arguing about the voting scheme, and it's impossible to reconstruct what that thread looked like while it was active. It's also not about Microsoft's shady business deals, as the whole thing was about crazy (and dumb) firmware things that Lenovo did. The claim was that the whole thing was due to a secret deal with Microsoft, and the only evidence (apart from historical crap that MS pulled) was a community support guy's post. I believe (and the patches posted by Intel seem to confirm) that the whole thing is a mix of incompetence and missing drivers. The usual test procedure for laptops is "Does it boot the latest Windows? Then ship it!". They probably never even tested whether it can boot Linux. Lenovo has nothing to gain from ruining their reputation with something like this. They do have lots of money to gain by not testing and fixing their stuff to work with Linux, because that would require effort and time of skilled people and the whole thing would be rather expensive. With the margins in the PC business, I can't blame them for deciding against it, although of course I wish they wouldn't. Let me list some of the less than stellar top-level comments from that thread. After a day or so the comment ranking seems to have brought the more considerate comments to the top, it wasn't that way when the thread was a few hours old. Its early hours were quite disgraceful, and I stand by my position that it was one of, if not the worst thread on here in the nearly three years I've been reading this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546096 - this one is particularly absurd, comparing Lenovo's behaviour to the Holocaust. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546306

nickpsecurity 10y ago
"Let me list some of the less than stellar top-level comments from that thread. " Most of those suck but two are OK since they indicate a history of sneaky behavior. This could help readers wondering if this is merely a hiccup or part of a recurring problem that justifies switching vendors. This particular company puts quite a bit of effort into things that negatively impact some of its users to boost profits. Some companies do less of that. For those users, at least two of these comments like a few I found before would justify switching away from Lenovo regardless of what their motivations were. "The claim was that the whole thing was due to a secret deal with Microsoft, and the only evidence (apart from historical crap that MS pulled) was a community support guy's post." What I saw was a claim that the problem effectively blocked an install of anything but the OEM version of Windows. Microsoft negotiated secret deals to do that in the past. They also publicly pulled it with Vista and a recent one. So, that's how you partly test the Microsoft hypothesis. Was the only working image available only the latest version of Windows that Microsoft was pushing? Did it lock you in?

nickpsecurity 10y ago

"Let me list some of the less than stellar top-level comments from that thread. " Most of those suck but two are OK since they indicate a history of sneaky behavior. This could help readers wondering if this is merely a hiccup or part of a recurring problem that justifies switching vendors. This particular company puts quite a bit of effort into things that negatively impact some of its users to boost profits. Some companies do less of that. For those users, at least two of these comments like a few I found before would justify switching away from Lenovo regardless of what their motivations were. "The claim was that the whole thing was due to a secret deal with Microsoft, and the only evidence (apart from historical crap that MS pulled) was a community support guy's post." What I saw was a claim that the problem effectively blocked an install of anything but the OEM version of Windows. Microsoft negotiated secret deals to do that in the past. They also publicly pulled it with Vista and a recent one. So, that's how you partly test the Microsoft hypothesis. Was the only working image available only the latest version of Windows that Microsoft was pushing? Did it lock you in?