5 ms·

After that little spyware shittie they pulled off few years ago, while introducing huge security risks for their customers. And not once, but as repeat offender

After that little spyware shittie they pulled off few years ago, while introducing huge security risks for their customers. And not once, but as repeat offenders[1] this is a brand I would not touch while donning a hazmat suit. May be that they didn't do that with their pro offerings, but I for one try to avoid companies with such a mindset. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lenovo+spyware https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lenovo+spyware

hknapp 7y ago
Looks like I will be sticking with my xps 9360. Debating whether i want the new XPS with the taller screen, or not.
ThouYS 7y ago
Just to add some detail as to how bad this was, they actually man-in-the-middled https connections to inject ads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Man that's bad. Also didn't know about the "Download Valley" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley
mcv 7y ago
Wasn't that non-Thinkpad Lenovos? It's vitally important to understand that not every Lenovo is a Thinkpad. My impression is that they're a lot more careful with their Thinkpad brand than with their Lenovo brand. That said, it's true that it doesn't speak well of the company.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  It might help if they do what HP did and branch out their enterprise offerings. This is, in my opinion, one thing that greatly helps apple build their reputation. When you mention "Dell" people first think of their cheap/bad inspirion stuff and not of the high priced xps, elitebook etc. models. Similarly for HP, similarly for Lenovo. For the most part it helps to think of the consumer and non-consumer branches as completely different companies that just happen to have the same name.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Doesn't Lenovo do that already? When you say "Thinkpad", people think of indestructible laptops that pass a bunch of military tests.
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      Kinda, but not really. They do the branding for their premium models well, but they don't distance it from their consumer stuff. Case in point: There are many comments in this thread about their their privacy disasters with the consumer line or how they don't like the service levels for the consumer line. On the one hand, this has nothing to do with how it works for thinkpads, on the other hand both are Lenovo. As a similar example, suppose you have an article about a new Porsche and then 90% of the comments are about how they don't like something in their VW Golf. That would seems weird, right? Yet both are made by the same company.
windexh8er 7y ago
It could very easily be said that the majority of bloatware saddled on most consumer oriented PCs sold today introduce security risks for their customers. This is not unique to Lenovo but is standard practice for HP, Dell, etc. Unfortunately it's become standard practice to bastardize vanilla Windows installations by vendors in their own interest and not that of the customer purchasing. If I were a consumer buying a Windows laptop for Windows use cases there is no way I would trust any hardware supplier's OEM build out of the box to not include bloatware that adds a level of risk out of the box that isn't worth completely wiping the disk (including restoration partitions). Whether it be for "support" use cases or more nefarious / gray areas it's a hard sell to say any one is exemplary better than the other. Maybe niche players and those that are selling non-Windows variants, but the reality is margins are thin on general purpose computing and so these types of angles become the norm. And the reality is Windows has lost it's way with regard to being consumer oriented. A default consumer build out of the box is already riddled with ad and bloatware. It's truly a cringe-worthy state of consumer options today.
- sandov 7y ago
  The difference being that Lenovo did it at the firmware level. Even if you reinstalled Windows from scratch, the malware would still be installed.
  - windexh8er 7y ago
    Not exactly. It was bundled into the recovery partition, so if you used that to reinstall your machine you'd get the OEM installation which included Superfish. However, if you reinstalled Windows manually you wouldn't have. Technically it had nothing to do with firmware.
eloisant 7y ago
So what would be the best brand of laptop to buy and put Linux on?
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  Dell is selling XPS and other business laptops with Ubuntu installed at the factory. Not sure if it's a Dell spin of it, but it'll save you ~$40 by not paying the Microsoft tax. Purism has an open source laptop that looks good. Expensive, though. Voting for FOSS hardware with your wallet ain't cheap.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  I'm typing this on a T470 running Linux. It has been a fantastic laptop all around. In general I find it more productive than my work issued MBP. Others have stated hardware failures with their Lenovo, however I use mine daily and, generally, do not treat it any different than other laptops. The keyboard has fared better than the last three MBP I've been issued / reissued. YMMV, obviously. All hardware can fail and all hardware can have manufacturing defects. Overall, however, I feel as though my T470 is a more durable machine. And I'm excited to see AMD in the T lineup. While I might not purchase the first iteration, I'll definitely be watching the space. Lenovo is supporting Linux on a lot of their hardware moving forward [0]. Lenovo also joined LVFS in 2018 to provide native Linux firmware updates [1]. [0] https://www.lenovo.com/linux https://www.lenovo.com/linux [1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/lvfs-lenovo-firmware-updates-linux https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/lvfs-lenovo-firmware-upd...
  - nobleach 7y ago
    I typically tell people, "Everything but the fingerprint reader". On my X1C the only tiny battle I had to fight was for S3 suspend. I'm not even going to bother with the fingerprint reader.
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      Red hat is apparently paying for some work on this: https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fedora-workstation-31/ https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fed... So I guess it is going to land in fedora first and then make its way to other distros. That said, under windows the fingerprint reader is frustratingly bad (lots and lotsof false negatives and slow). How can they be almost perfect on phones but that awful on laptops?

hknapp 7y ago

Looks like I will be sticking with my xps 9360. Debating whether i want the new XPS with the taller screen, or not.

ThouYS 7y ago

Just to add some detail as to how bad this was, they actually man-in-the-middled https connections to inject ads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish

blaser-waffle 7y ago
Man that's bad. Also didn't know about the "Download Valley" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download_Valley

mcv 7y ago

Wasn't that non-Thinkpad Lenovos? It's vitally important to understand that not every Lenovo is a Thinkpad. My impression is that they're a lot more careful with their Thinkpad brand than with their Lenovo brand. That said, it's true that it doesn't speak well of the company.

diffeomorphism 7y ago
It might help if they do what HP did and branch out their enterprise offerings. This is, in my opinion, one thing that greatly helps apple build their reputation. When you mention "Dell" people first think of their cheap/bad inspirion stuff and not of the high priced xps, elitebook etc. models. Similarly for HP, similarly for Lenovo. For the most part it helps to think of the consumer and non-consumer branches as completely different companies that just happen to have the same name.
- mcv 7y ago
  Doesn't Lenovo do that already? When you say "Thinkpad", people think of indestructible laptops that pass a bunch of military tests.
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    Kinda, but not really. They do the branding for their premium models well, but they don't distance it from their consumer stuff. Case in point: There are many comments in this thread about their their privacy disasters with the consumer line or how they don't like the service levels for the consumer line. On the one hand, this has nothing to do with how it works for thinkpads, on the other hand both are Lenovo. As a similar example, suppose you have an article about a new Porsche and then 90% of the comments are about how they don't like something in their VW Golf. That would seems weird, right? Yet both are made by the same company.

windexh8er 7y ago

It could very easily be said that the majority of bloatware saddled on most consumer oriented PCs sold today introduce security risks for their customers. This is not unique to Lenovo but is standard practice for HP, Dell, etc. Unfortunately it's become standard practice to bastardize vanilla Windows installations by vendors in their own interest and not that of the customer purchasing. If I were a consumer buying a Windows laptop for Windows use cases there is no way I would trust any hardware supplier's OEM build out of the box to not include bloatware that adds a level of risk out of the box that isn't worth completely wiping the disk (including restoration partitions). Whether it be for "support" use cases or more nefarious / gray areas it's a hard sell to say any one is exemplary better than the other. Maybe niche players and those that are selling non-Windows variants, but the reality is margins are thin on general purpose computing and so these types of angles become the norm. And the reality is Windows has lost it's way with regard to being consumer oriented. A default consumer build out of the box is already riddled with ad and bloatware. It's truly a cringe-worthy state of consumer options today.

sandov 7y ago
The difference being that Lenovo did it at the firmware level. Even if you reinstalled Windows from scratch, the malware would still be installed.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  Not exactly. It was bundled into the recovery partition, so if you used that to reinstall your machine you'd get the OEM installation which included Superfish. However, if you reinstalled Windows manually you wouldn't have. Technically it had nothing to do with firmware.

eloisant 7y ago

So what would be the best brand of laptop to buy and put Linux on?

blaser-waffle 7y ago
Dell is selling XPS and other business laptops with Ubuntu installed at the factory. Not sure if it's a Dell spin of it, but it'll save you ~$40 by not paying the Microsoft tax. Purism has an open source laptop that looks good. Expensive, though. Voting for FOSS hardware with your wallet ain't cheap.
windexh8er 7y ago
I'm typing this on a T470 running Linux. It has been a fantastic laptop all around. In general I find it more productive than my work issued MBP. Others have stated hardware failures with their Lenovo, however I use mine daily and, generally, do not treat it any different than other laptops. The keyboard has fared better than the last three MBP I've been issued / reissued. YMMV, obviously. All hardware can fail and all hardware can have manufacturing defects. Overall, however, I feel as though my T470 is a more durable machine. And I'm excited to see AMD in the T lineup. While I might not purchase the first iteration, I'll definitely be watching the space. Lenovo is supporting Linux on a lot of their hardware moving forward [0]. Lenovo also joined LVFS in 2018 to provide native Linux firmware updates [1]. [0] https://www.lenovo.com/linux https://www.lenovo.com/linux [1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/lvfs-lenovo-firmware-updates-linux https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/08/lvfs-lenovo-firmware-upd...
- nobleach 7y ago
  I typically tell people, "Everything but the fingerprint reader". On my X1C the only tiny battle I had to fight was for S3 suspend. I'm not even going to bother with the fingerprint reader.
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    Red hat is apparently paying for some work on this: https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fedora-workstation-31/ https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2019/06/24/on-the-road-to-fed... So I guess it is going to land in fedora first and then make its way to other distros. That said, under windows the fingerprint reader is frustratingly bad (lots and lotsof false negatives and slow). How can they be almost perfect on phones but that awful on laptops?