4 ms·

Companies don't buy Dell or Lenovo because there devices are easily repearable. They buy it because Dell and Lenovo replace/repair a device in 24 hours.

by sigi45 9y ago

Moru 9y ago
We don't buy Lenovo because of the 24 hour service, we don't buy Lenovo because once we did and apparently it was full of adware already on first boot...
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I am yet to work at any company that doesn't make use of custom images.
  - jcelerier 9y ago
    > I am yet to work at any company that doesn't make use of custom images. Does your companies also replace the BIOS of your machines? Because this is where the Lenovo malware were originating from: https://www.techworm.net/2015/08/lenovo-pcs-and-laptops-seem-to-have-a-bios-level-backdoor.html https://www.techworm.net/2015/08/lenovo-pcs-and-laptops-seem...
  - AmVess 9y ago
    Lenovo had a BIOS that would download and install their own crapware. You could image it all you wanted, and it would still inject their own garbage into Windows.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - tallanvor 9y ago
      That was a stupid thing Lenovo did, but it was limited to consumer devices (and not all of them at that - the Microsoft Signature edition devices didn't have this, for example). Laptops purchased through enterprise sales were not affected by this.
      - Tepix 9y ago
        At some point you ought to stop trusting a company. After Lenovo has done this three times in a row, isn't it time to say "thanks, but no thanks"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security
        tallanvor 9y ago
        I mean, go ahead and not buy from them. For me, If they have the best product available when I'm ready for a new laptop, and I know how to buy it such that I won't be getting any bloatware/spyware/etc., then I'll still buy from them because the quality of their hardware has been consistent for me.
        saimiam 9y ago
        It's interesting that different people took up the cause of highlighting Lenovo's faults. Unless it's the same person using alts, it looks like people are quite mad at Lenovo.
        ethbro 9y ago
        Sample size 4?
        sitkack 9y ago
        Lots of loyal customers left the brand for this and fucking with the keyboard.
        pjmlp 9y ago
        And went to where, Dell, HP? Because I doubt BigCorp with thousand deployments of ThinkPads with Windows images would suddenly go MacBook Pro.
        tallanvor 9y ago
        There certainly are plenty of people that are still mad at them, and they did make some really bad decisions. And maybe I should be more upset since those actions were more likely to affect people who aren't as likely to understand what was done. But at the end of the day, I can probably find as many things to hate about Dell, HP, and every other manufacturer, and then who would I buy my next laptop from?
    - discreditable 9y ago
      That BIOS adware and the superfish incident only involved consumer-level PCs.
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        It is almost as of people can't compute that there are multiple product lines under the same brand...
        criddell 9y ago
        And it's shocking that a company like Lenovo doesn't understand that when they act unethically in one line of business, the tarnished reputation may harm a different line of business. The bullshit they engaged in with consumers definitely made me less likely to replace my current ThinkPads with new ThinkPads. What they do have working for them is that their competition is largely just as bad or worse. I wish Microsoft would get serious about hardware. I trust them more than any of their partners.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Thinkpad? I do not recall ever reading about any Thinkpads being found with anything close to malware on them. Their ideapads on the other hand... That is really a problem across the board though, people conflate the brand with the cheapest product line out of the nearby brick and mortar. For example i have read all kinds of doom and gloom about Acer quality control. Yet i have seen their business line survive far beyond what people claimed.
jopsen 9y ago
If the chromebooks are fully cloud-sync'ed, couldn't the IT department just have a few extra sitting around to replace broken ones. In fact, do you even care that you get back the same machine?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Only if cloud-sync'ed means on the IT controlled servers. Actually given how strict many companies are about NDAs and controlling their internal network, it surprises me how some put their golden eggs on Google's basket.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    If transit is properly encrypted, a lot of companies seem to be getting more comfortable with cloud vs on-prem from a security perspective. Think of it as a security-analog to infrastructure as a service: why build best in breed, when you can buy cloud resources that already have security integrated (and maintained!)? Even at a large org, keeping internal infrastructure secure and updated is non-trivial.
    - yazan94 9y ago
      > a lot of companies seem to be getting more comfortable with cloud vs on-prem from a security perspective. I work at a Big Corp Inc. This is unfortunately not the case here. The person you replied to is correct in how our security team sees things.
      - kbutler 9y ago
        I've been amazed at the reversal in my employer's attitude and policies, from everything must be internal, to move everything goes to the cloud. Not sure how much to attribute to C-level staff turnover.
      - ethbro 9y ago
        kbutler's experience to the counter has been mine at well. I moved to Big Company, Inc, and have been amazed at how smooth the "cloud" security conversations go to "on prem." One of the major factors seems to be standardization. Once security has blessed a cloud provider, they're blessing the infrastructure and features, so the blessing holds for most projects that might want to use it. In contrast to getting approval for a semi-custom config on-prem. Caveat: I'm not working with privileged data (gov or healthcare) anymore, so those considerations aren't influencing the behavior. Imagine HIPAA shops would be a lot more conservative.
kamaal 9y ago
>>They buy it because Dell and Lenovo replace/repair a device in 24 hours. This. I worked in the Dell Call Center in Bangalore, India around 2005. Customer support was treated as the most important function in the entire company. I remember they would make us agents skip meals if the call volumes got high. Managers would walk to the cafeteria can carry us meals/sandwiches to our desks. Breaks were highly partitioned throughout the day. It was 2 fifteen minute breaks, which you could take anytime. And then a 30-45 minute meal break. Every single thing in the building looked like revolved around one single thing- 'customer satisfaction'. The metrics for performance were designed around these quality parameters. resolve rate(solutions/calls), mean time to resolve(span of solution calls/no of calls)... things like that. There used to even y-jack(eavesdrop) on our calls randomly for evaluation. There were also strict penalties for goofing up, upto things like getting fired if you make them more than 3 times. I could go on.. The point being these people are good at customer service because they take that business very seriously. As techies we may laugh at that, but that is whole different league of business with cut throat performance requirements.

Companies don't buy Dell or Lenovo because there devices are easily repearable. They buy it because Dell and Lenovo replace/repair a device in 24 hours.

by sigi45 9y ago

Companies don't buy Dell or Lenovo because there devices are easily repearable. They buy it because Dell and Lenovo replace/repair a device in 24 hours.

Moru 9y ago

We don't buy Lenovo because of the 24 hour service, we don't buy Lenovo because once we did and apparently it was full of adware already on first boot...

pjmlp 9y ago
I am yet to work at any company that doesn't make use of custom images.
- jcelerier 9y ago
  > I am yet to work at any company that doesn't make use of custom images. Does your companies also replace the BIOS of your machines? Because this is where the Lenovo malware were originating from: https://www.techworm.net/2015/08/lenovo-pcs-and-laptops-seem-to-have-a-bios-level-backdoor.html https://www.techworm.net/2015/08/lenovo-pcs-and-laptops-seem...
- AmVess 9y ago
  Lenovo had a BIOS that would download and install their own crapware. You could image it all you wanted, and it would still inject their own garbage into Windows.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tallanvor 9y ago
    That was a stupid thing Lenovo did, but it was limited to consumer devices (and not all of them at that - the Microsoft Signature edition devices didn't have this, for example). Laptops purchased through enterprise sales were not affected by this.
    - Tepix 9y ago
      At some point you ought to stop trusting a company. After Lenovo has done this three times in a row, isn't it time to say "thanks, but no thanks"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo#Security
      - tallanvor 9y ago
        I mean, go ahead and not buy from them. For me, If they have the best product available when I'm ready for a new laptop, and I know how to buy it such that I won't be getting any bloatware/spyware/etc., then I'll still buy from them because the quality of their hardware has been consistent for me.
        saimiam 9y ago
        It's interesting that different people took up the cause of highlighting Lenovo's faults. Unless it's the same person using alts, it looks like people are quite mad at Lenovo.
        ethbro 9y ago
        Sample size 4?
        sitkack 9y ago
        Lots of loyal customers left the brand for this and fucking with the keyboard.
        pjmlp 9y ago
        And went to where, Dell, HP? Because I doubt BigCorp with thousand deployments of ThinkPads with Windows images would suddenly go MacBook Pro.
        tallanvor 9y ago
        There certainly are plenty of people that are still mad at them, and they did make some really bad decisions. And maybe I should be more upset since those actions were more likely to affect people who aren't as likely to understand what was done. But at the end of the day, I can probably find as many things to hate about Dell, HP, and every other manufacturer, and then who would I buy my next laptop from?
  - discreditable 9y ago
    That BIOS adware and the superfish incident only involved consumer-level PCs.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      It is almost as of people can't compute that there are multiple product lines under the same brand...
      - criddell 9y ago
        And it's shocking that a company like Lenovo doesn't understand that when they act unethically in one line of business, the tarnished reputation may harm a different line of business. The bullshit they engaged in with consumers definitely made me less likely to replace my current ThinkPads with new ThinkPads. What they do have working for them is that their competition is largely just as bad or worse. I wish Microsoft would get serious about hardware. I trust them more than any of their partners.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
digi_owl 9y ago
Thinkpad? I do not recall ever reading about any Thinkpads being found with anything close to malware on them. Their ideapads on the other hand... That is really a problem across the board though, people conflate the brand with the cheapest product line out of the nearby brick and mortar. For example i have read all kinds of doom and gloom about Acer quality control. Yet i have seen their business line survive far beyond what people claimed.

jopsen 9y ago

If the chromebooks are fully cloud-sync'ed, couldn't the IT department just have a few extra sitting around to replace broken ones. In fact, do you even care that you get back the same machine?

pjmlp 9y ago
Only if cloud-sync'ed means on the IT controlled servers. Actually given how strict many companies are about NDAs and controlling their internal network, it surprises me how some put their golden eggs on Google's basket.
- ethbro 9y ago
  If transit is properly encrypted, a lot of companies seem to be getting more comfortable with cloud vs on-prem from a security perspective. Think of it as a security-analog to infrastructure as a service: why build best in breed, when you can buy cloud resources that already have security integrated (and maintained!)? Even at a large org, keeping internal infrastructure secure and updated is non-trivial.
  - yazan94 9y ago
    > a lot of companies seem to be getting more comfortable with cloud vs on-prem from a security perspective. I work at a Big Corp Inc. This is unfortunately not the case here. The person you replied to is correct in how our security team sees things.
    - kbutler 9y ago
      I've been amazed at the reversal in my employer's attitude and policies, from everything must be internal, to move everything goes to the cloud. Not sure how much to attribute to C-level staff turnover.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      kbutler's experience to the counter has been mine at well. I moved to Big Company, Inc, and have been amazed at how smooth the "cloud" security conversations go to "on prem." One of the major factors seems to be standardization. Once security has blessed a cloud provider, they're blessing the infrastructure and features, so the blessing holds for most projects that might want to use it. In contrast to getting approval for a semi-custom config on-prem. Caveat: I'm not working with privileged data (gov or healthcare) anymore, so those considerations aren't influencing the behavior. Imagine HIPAA shops would be a lot more conservative.

kamaal 9y ago

>>They buy it because Dell and Lenovo replace/repair a device in 24 hours. This. I worked in the Dell Call Center in Bangalore, India around 2005. Customer support was treated as the most important function in the entire company. I remember they would make us agents skip meals if the call volumes got high. Managers would walk to the cafeteria can carry us meals/sandwiches to our desks. Breaks were highly partitioned throughout the day. It was 2 fifteen minute breaks, which you could take anytime. And then a 30-45 minute meal break. Every single thing in the building looked like revolved around one single thing- 'customer satisfaction'. The metrics for performance were designed around these quality parameters. resolve rate(solutions/calls), mean time to resolve(span of solution calls/no of calls)... things like that. There used to even y-jack(eavesdrop) on our calls randomly for evaluation. There were also strict penalties for goofing up, upto things like getting fired if you make them more than 3 times. I could go on.. The point being these people are good at customer service because they take that business very seriously. As techies we may laugh at that, but that is whole different league of business with cut throat performance requirements.