9 ms·

And through all of this, the Lenovo name will continue to be tarnished. That's where the real damage is.

by chime 11y ago

mhurron 11y ago
In 18 months no one will remember this. Honestly, corporations face basically no repercussions from customers because of doing stupid or outright malicious things.
- pavs 11y ago
  people who actually cared about the superfish incident will remember this, and thats where it counts and where it will hurt. Everyday joe couldn't care less about superfish.
  - mhurron 11y ago
    Lenovo doesn't care that your individual security minded person had an issue with it, Lenovo cares that their volume purchasers continue to purchase in volume. They weren't impacted and they don't care. There are basically no long term downsides to Lenovo for doing what they did.
    - onli 11y ago
      And you know that how? News articles in the normal media titled "Lenovo spreading Spyware" reach exactly those normal customers, and it is quite possible that this has an effect. And further, those users interested in the stuff are the ones recommending laptops to others. We simply don't know the effect because we know no sale figures, or do we?
  - xorcist 11y ago
    It's a relevant question whether enough people care. The Sony rootkit scandal was (almost) as bad as this, yet it didn't make a dent in their computer sales and the Playstation sold better than ever.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      As someone who hasn't bought a Sony labelled product since the rootkit scandal, not sure how much I agree... they definitely would have gotten far more from me when I've bought a couple large TVs, and two stereo systems since then... I even held out on a Bluray player for a long time (I didn't buy sony labelled at least). Though it's akin to avoiding Bank America Corp in practice, they have their hands in every pot.
    - JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Any yet their e-reader business failed. And they don't seem to have done so well on mp3 players (they were big money for other companies a few years ago). Their phone sales are weak compared to other companies with a similar product. The thing these companies miss is that non-tech people ask their tech friends/family before purchasing new things... So piss off a few 100,000 of the techy people and that can translate over the next few years to millions of lost sales.
- e40 11y ago
  Absolutely not true. I control purchasing for my company, and have caused to be purchased a bunch of Lenovo's. No more, though.
  - charlieflowers 11y ago
    What will you switch to? I lost faith in almost all other laptop manufacturers due to poor quality.
    - chucksmash 11y ago
      I bought a Dell Precision M3800 for personal use a few weeks ago. It's available without a Windows license which was a plus (I live in Ubuntu-land). Only drawbacks so far have been a) the available Linux drivers for the Broadcom wireless seem a bit wonky and b) a lot of apps have issues with the high DPI display.
    - e40 11y ago
      Macbook Pros and run Windows in a VM (VMware). With the SSDs on my Mac, it's literally faster than the beefy machine with spinning disks I had running Windows 7. With Mac's Spaces, I can switch to another screen running Windows with Control-Rightarrow (using a non-Mac keyboard here). It's really seemless and I've never found a single drawback to it.
    - julianz 11y ago
      I've got a Dell e7440 which is a really nice compromise between portability and power. It's built out of something metal and has survived me taking it everywhere so far. 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and an i7 does the job.
  - pekk 11y ago
    I will continue to order as many Lenovo machines as I need. It is more important to me that the vendor serves my needs than what HN thinks about them. I'm not buying something crappy for my purposes because HN is mad.
    - 11y ago
- CWuestefeld 11y ago
  Sony's been on my "do not buy" list since the rootkit debacle. They're missing out on sales of video games, cameras, and other consumer electronics (not to mention music and movies) for their misbehavior. And I know I'm not the only one who remembers.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    You are not the only one.
  - uxp 11y ago
    That's good for you, and I fully support your decision, but I wish to posit an argument about Sony and their numerous "debacles" over the past decade starting from the CD Rootkit. Do you remember when Sony went after GeoHot, George Hotz, and fail0verflow for his and their reverse engineering of the PS3 and the outrage and virtual pitchforks that were raised with others touting that they too would never purchase a SCEA/SCEI product again? Remember even more outrage that was raised after PSN went down and it was revealed just how incompetent their internal network security was and how they allegedly stored unencrypted user information and used significantly insecure and broken cryptographic hashing algorithms? In both instances, people said that they were done with Sony. Yet, the Xbox One has had significantly less adoption than the Sony PS4. Please note, I'm not going to argue that the people that said that they were no longer purchasing Sony products are the very same people that bought a PS4 over an Xbox One, but I am arguing that these people had a minuscule to nonexistent effect on the overall repercussions against Sony as to not matter. Searching for "Xbox One PS4 Sales" brings up hundreds of articles ranging from just after launch up to this very day with month-by-month numbers landing from a 1.4 million unit difference in January of 2014, to a 1.7 million difference between the PS4 and Xbox One in the second quarter of 2014, and estimates at that time of 9 million PS4s sold globally versus 5 million for the Xbox One. An article from October of 2014 pegs the PS4 at a 40% lead over the Xbox One. This is a significant difference. Apparently, no one else cares how draconian or insecure a company treats their data, because only a few people remember the short term disasters over the long term entertainment value they receive from the products produced by these companies.
    - 11y ago

And through all of this, the Lenovo name will continue to be tarnished. That's where the real damage is.

by chime 11y ago

And through all of this, the Lenovo name will continue to be tarnished. That's where the real damage is.

In 18 months no one will remember this. Honestly, corporations face basically no repercussions from customers because of doing stupid or outright malicious things.

pavs 11y ago
people who actually cared about the superfish incident will remember this, and thats where it counts and where it will hurt. Everyday joe couldn't care less about superfish.
- mhurron 11y ago
  Lenovo doesn't care that your individual security minded person had an issue with it, Lenovo cares that their volume purchasers continue to purchase in volume. They weren't impacted and they don't care. There are basically no long term downsides to Lenovo for doing what they did.
  - onli 11y ago
    And you know that how? News articles in the normal media titled "Lenovo spreading Spyware" reach exactly those normal customers, and it is quite possible that this has an effect. And further, those users interested in the stuff are the ones recommending laptops to others. We simply don't know the effect because we know no sale figures, or do we?
- xorcist 11y ago
  It's a relevant question whether enough people care. The Sony rootkit scandal was (almost) as bad as this, yet it didn't make a dent in their computer sales and the Playstation sold better than ever.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    As someone who hasn't bought a Sony labelled product since the rootkit scandal, not sure how much I agree... they definitely would have gotten far more from me when I've bought a couple large TVs, and two stereo systems since then... I even held out on a Bluray player for a long time (I didn't buy sony labelled at least). Though it's akin to avoiding Bank America Corp in practice, they have their hands in every pot.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    Any yet their e-reader business failed. And they don't seem to have done so well on mp3 players (they were big money for other companies a few years ago). Their phone sales are weak compared to other companies with a similar product. The thing these companies miss is that non-tech people ask their tech friends/family before purchasing new things... So piss off a few 100,000 of the techy people and that can translate over the next few years to millions of lost sales.
e40 11y ago
Absolutely not true. I control purchasing for my company, and have caused to be purchased a bunch of Lenovo's. No more, though.
- charlieflowers 11y ago
  What will you switch to? I lost faith in almost all other laptop manufacturers due to poor quality.
  - chucksmash 11y ago
    I bought a Dell Precision M3800 for personal use a few weeks ago. It's available without a Windows license which was a plus (I live in Ubuntu-land). Only drawbacks so far have been a) the available Linux drivers for the Broadcom wireless seem a bit wonky and b) a lot of apps have issues with the high DPI display.
  - e40 11y ago
    Macbook Pros and run Windows in a VM (VMware). With the SSDs on my Mac, it's literally faster than the beefy machine with spinning disks I had running Windows 7. With Mac's Spaces, I can switch to another screen running Windows with Control-Rightarrow (using a non-Mac keyboard here). It's really seemless and I've never found a single drawback to it.
  - julianz 11y ago
    I've got a Dell e7440 which is a really nice compromise between portability and power. It's built out of something metal and has survived me taking it everywhere so far. 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and an i7 does the job.
- pekk 11y ago
  I will continue to order as many Lenovo machines as I need. It is more important to me that the vendor serves my needs than what HN thinks about them. I'm not buying something crappy for my purposes because HN is mad.
  - 11y ago
CWuestefeld 11y ago
Sony's been on my "do not buy" list since the rootkit debacle. They're missing out on sales of video games, cameras, and other consumer electronics (not to mention music and movies) for their misbehavior. And I know I'm not the only one who remembers.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  You are not the only one.
- uxp 11y ago
  That's good for you, and I fully support your decision, but I wish to posit an argument about Sony and their numerous "debacles" over the past decade starting from the CD Rootkit. Do you remember when Sony went after GeoHot, George Hotz, and fail0verflow for his and their reverse engineering of the PS3 and the outrage and virtual pitchforks that were raised with others touting that they too would never purchase a SCEA/SCEI product again? Remember even more outrage that was raised after PSN went down and it was revealed just how incompetent their internal network security was and how they allegedly stored unencrypted user information and used significantly insecure and broken cryptographic hashing algorithms? In both instances, people said that they were done with Sony. Yet, the Xbox One has had significantly less adoption than the Sony PS4. Please note, I'm not going to argue that the people that said that they were no longer purchasing Sony products are the very same people that bought a PS4 over an Xbox One, but I am arguing that these people had a minuscule to nonexistent effect on the overall repercussions against Sony as to not matter. Searching for "Xbox One PS4 Sales" brings up hundreds of articles ranging from just after launch up to this very day with month-by-month numbers landing from a 1.4 million unit difference in January of 2014, to a 1.7 million difference between the PS4 and Xbox One in the second quarter of 2014, and estimates at that time of 9 million PS4s sold globally versus 5 million for the Xbox One. An article from October of 2014 pegs the PS4 at a 40% lead over the Xbox One. This is a significant difference. Apparently, no one else cares how draconian or insecure a company treats their data, because only a few people remember the short term disasters over the long term entertainment value they receive from the products produced by these companies.
  - 11y ago