Lenovo Still Shipping Laptops With Superfish 127
Ars Technica reports that weeks after Lenovo said it would stop selling computers with Superfish adware installed, it's still there for many purchasers of the company's laptops.
From the article:
Based on the experience of Ars readers Chai Trakulthai and Laura Buddine, Lenovo overstated both assurances. The pair recently examined a $550 Lenovo G510 notebook purchased by a neighbor, and their experience wasn't consistent with two of Lenovo's talking points. First, the PC was ordered in early February more than four weeks after Lenovo said it stopped bundling Superfish, and yet when the notebook arrived in late February it came pre-installed with the adware and the secure sockets layer certificate that poses such a threat.
"Lenovo may be saying they haven't installed Superfish since December, but the problem is that they are still shipping out systems with Superfish installed," Buddine said. "The Windows build had a date of December. They apparently aren't sorry enough to re-image the computers they have in stock to remove the problem and they're still shipping new computers with Superfish installed." Supply chains are long, and hand-work is expensive, so this might not surprise anyone. Less forgivable, though is this finding, of the software provided to purge machines of the adware: "Lenovo's software didn't begin to live up to its promise of removing all Superfish-related data. Based on its own self-generated report, the tool left behind the Superfish application itself. A scan using the Malwarebytes antivirus program found the Superfish remnants VisualDiscovery.exe, SuperfishCert.dll, and a VisualDiscovery registry setting."
"Lenovo may be saying they haven't installed Superfish since December, but the problem is that they are still shipping out systems with Superfish installed," Buddine said. "The Windows build had a date of December. They apparently aren't sorry enough to re-image the computers they have in stock to remove the problem and they're still shipping new computers with Superfish installed." Supply chains are long, and hand-work is expensive, so this might not surprise anyone. Less forgivable, though is this finding, of the software provided to purge machines of the adware: "Lenovo's software didn't begin to live up to its promise of removing all Superfish-related data. Based on its own self-generated report, the tool left behind the Superfish application itself. A scan using the Malwarebytes antivirus program found the Superfish remnants VisualDiscovery.exe, SuperfishCert.dll, and a VisualDiscovery registry setting."
Too late (Score:5, Interesting)
My company bought 1200 Lenovo laptops last year, but now we'll never buy another Lenovo product again. I don't care if was the consumer laptop, they are no longer a company that can be trusted.
Lenovo (Score:4, Informative)
Lenovo were the only ones who were caught. And:
Criticisms of Superfish software predated the "Lenovo incident" and were not limited to the Lenovo user community: as early as 2010, Apple, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Windows users had expressed concerns in online support and discussion forums that Superfish software had been installed on their computers without their knowledge, by being bundled with other software. [wikipedia.org]
After that there is some finger pointing by the CEO of Superfish at another company.
Anyway, when it comes to this shit and cheap computers that subsidize their prices with adware/malware/advertising/etc ..., I just clean all that shit off and then some other things - and it tickles me that the asshole companies like Superfish are getting screwed because they won't be getting any ad revenue from me or anyone else that I cleaned a machine for.
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Most companies that buy that many systems have their own image they just blast onto the laptop. Since it's usually a base install of the OS plus required drivers and software, there's no Superfish installed.
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If only another company would make a Thinkpad clone, there would be a giant army of people running away and Lenovo would die, and companies would be On Notice not to do that.
As it is, their key product line is unaffected and has no good alternative.
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Alternative ?
Try the Fujitsu Lifebooks.
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you still buy Cisco switches, right? :)
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So sez you.
(Posted to remove a moderation gone wrong.)
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless his company disolves or passes the burden of purchaseing laptops onto employees in the future, there will be a need in 3-5 years to get new ones.
However, 1200 laptops, with a company that large it should be using volume licensing and reimaging the computers with their own keyed software. This would negate anything the manufacturer does. Is there something with new laptops making this impractical?
Re:Too late (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think they're worried about the OS level stuff, but more that if they'll load malware onto a consumer product intentionally they might consider loading other less savory things into firmware or something similar. There's worry about the slippery slope rather than the actual Superfish fiasco.
Re:Too late (Score:4, Interesting)
If a company is incompetent enough to ship such insecure software, why would you trust that their firmware drivers were safe. If a company thinks its good econmic sense to ship adware, why would trust them use high quality components where they might save a few cent by cheaper low quality ones.
I have bought thinkpads in the past, because they are great hardware (i like the track point, wide set of ports even on the ultraportable x series, replacable battery, easily swapable disks, IPS screens). But my 18 month old x230 has just developed a random shutdown fault, so my opinion of Lenovo is failling fast.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company is incompetent enough to ship such insecure software, why would you trust that their firmware drivers were safe. If a company thinks its good econmic sense to ship adware, why would trust them use high quality components where they might save a few cent by cheaper low quality ones.
That's an easy answer. Companies are ignorant machines. A company isn't incompetent, certain parts of it are. While a small group of idiots thought it may be a good idea to do one thing, it is quite likely that the other group (responsible for firmware or hardware) had no idea that it was going on, have far better quality for their own segment, and the people may have even been against it had they known.
I postulate that the people assembling the hardware or the firmware had no idea what malware was being installed on the final machine, and that one has nothing to do with the other.
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Read the other reports above. Lenovo seems untrustworthy from one end to the other. (Of course, I can't verify that those other posts are made by disinterested parties.)
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Legally companies are people.
If some part of a person does something wrong.
You don't blame the part. You blame the person.
"I didn't kill those people! my hand did!"
Yeah. that won't work.
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While much of what you say contains truth, I think you are too quick to discount overall company culture. If the processes in one part of the company can get so lax without management correcting it, it's more likely that the same problem exists in every other part of the company as well.
Even if the only part of Lenovo that sucked was the group that decided that the malware was acceptable, that still means the company as a whole can't be trusted -- since from the outside of the company, there's no way to kno
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Thinkpads _were_ great hardware. My last Thinkpad was an x220, and a lemon. They refused the third return and then the warranty expired. The video never was reliable (would stay dead for days through multiple reboots, then return for a while if you never rebooted). The hard drive was also a lemon, death clicks and all.
At work I had X230 and X240, but they just weren't good hardware, and got cycled frequently. That employer no longer buys Thinkpads either - too much downtime even if you have warranty se
Re:Too late (Score:4, Interesting)
Lenovo has been coasting on brand reputation for quite some time now.
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Bios compatibility is a thing. My experience is mostly with Dell non-consumer hardware, but you can generally replace most parts with non-branded ones. When you can't it is typically something that is not coded to be compatible in the BIOS, not that it's BIOS locked not to be able to use it. For example, if you get a brand new wireless card and try to put it into a 3 year old laptop, the BIOS may not support that card because it's old, not because it's locked.
Re:Too late (Score:4, Informative)
If they're buying consumer grade laptops for employees, they'll just buy whatever is cheap in 5 years, and the bean counter won't listen to the whining about which brands anybody wants. That's true even if the CTO was overheard in the cafeteria saying, "Gosh, we'll never buy from them again!"
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From the sounds of it, you are some lickspittle social marketing drone for Lenovo. Why else would you be here trying to disparage users to protect a company unless you have a stake?
Rush job? (Score:5, Informative)
Although I consider Lenovo fully responsible (and liable) for SuperPhish in the first place, I could easily see the removal tool's inefficacy stemming from it being a panicked rush job.
Re: Rush job? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Rush job? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Hanlon's razor (never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity) is way too optimistic about human nature.
Lenovo has no ethics, pure and simple. As far as I'm concerned, they lost a prospective customer.
Re: Rush job? (Score:1)
Another perspective is that Lenovo has been so burned by this that they're the one company that will never do anything like it again.
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Few if any corporations have ethics. They generally (not always) do what is legal, but not necessarily what is ethical, and almost never what is morally correct. They exist for one purpose and that is to make a profit.
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My morally correct is not your morally correct. It is impossible for a company to do anything morally correct as universal morality code would be an oxymoron.
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My morally correct is not your morally correct. It is impossible for a company to do anything morally correct as universal morality code would be an oxymoron.
That is what Ethics is for, and why the main focus of complaints is generally ethics and not morality. Ethics is the overlapping parts people agreed on.
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And admit it was malware whilst Superfish was obviously just a case of misunderstoodware? /sarcasm
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You don't do business with any company that allows this shit in any part of their business.
You make this choice because you have an ounce of morality. Which you clearly lack.
Re:Genral Consumer vs. Business Models (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not even so much morality as self interest. If they'll do this to some of their customers, they'll do it to others, so you don't want to be one of those others. And if software is too easily removed they're quite capable of doing it in firmware.
Doing business only with reputable companies falls within the area of "enlightened self-interest" rather than altruism.
Never trust them again (Score:4, Insightful)
This was such a blatantly anti-customer move that I will never - NEVER - be a Lenovo customer again. They cannot be trusted, and probably can never be trusted again because any "change" could just be a whitewashing campaign, not a real change.
This is simply more evidence that they deserve all the shit they're getting, and more.
Re:Never trust them again (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a counterproductive way of doing things.
Whenever making that kind of statement towards any sort of business you're telling them that there's no point to try to correct whatever upset you, as all resources spent to that end are going to be in vain anyway.
The spyware gives them some money. If all people who hate it put Lenovo in their blacklist forever, then the most sensible business decision is keeping the spyware. The customers that hate it won't come back, and the ones that remain don't care, so nothing is gained by removing it after losing that part of the customer base.
Re:Never trust them again (Score:5, Informative)
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I understand the idea, yes. But:
1. Most of the time, it doesn't work. Let's face it, at least 95% of the people looking to buy a laptop don't understand this issue. A good amount of people doesn't care about spying either, because they think they have anything to hide, or because the US government is doing it so it must be good, or because the US government doing it makes it impossible to avoid anyway, or for a myriad other reasons. I think Lenovo would have to be in a very weak state for this to do them un
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Everything you say is correct if what Lenovo did was just commit an innocent error. I don't think that's what they did. I think what they did was overtly malicious, and the only suitable response is to never do business with them again.
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Those aren't the only two options.
This is an opportunity for the typical end-user to learn how to uninstall the malware and/or reinstall windows from a clean version, thus making them better as a computer user.
Re:Never trust them again (Score:5, Interesting)
At the very least, heads should have rolled. And one of them had better be the CEO's. Better yet, the whole chain of command that made and approved the decision to install the malware.
Since this hasn't happened, we can safely conclude that Lenovo is in bad faith and unwilling to do what is right.
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At the very least, heads should have rolled. And one of them had better be the CEO's. Better yet, the whole chain of command that made and approved the decision to install the malware.
Since this hasn't happened, we can safely conclude that Lenovo is in bad faith and unwilling to do what is right.
At the very least, Lenovo should have been sued half way into oblivion, and their executives should have been arrested and charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act.
But they're a corporation, so... "fuck you" says the U.S. attorneys.
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On the other hand, people who keep buying their machines make them stop installing spyware HOW exactly?
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There is not a single unit of electronics equipment made in China that can be trusted not to spy on you for some pretext. Not one. If you buy Chinese-made electronic equipment, you can expect to be spied on. That's what they do.
Neither can we trust the US, thanks to the traitors to the Constitution. We're kind of short on alternatives here.
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And between the US and China, I would prefer to be spied on by China. They have less of an ability to harm me.
Lenovo is looking at this from a profit PoV (Score:5, Insightful)
.
From that point of view, why should they reimage the drives of notebooks in inventory?
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...why should they reimage the drives of notebooks in inventory?
To avoid a class-action lawsuit, maybe?
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I'm pretty sure that the people who've already been impacted are enough to bring a class action suit; eliminating a few more plaintiffs won't change much.
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What I'm saying (bearing in mind of course that This Is Merely My Opinion and that I Am Not A Lawyer) is:
Previous to this, Lenovo didn't promise not to sell machines with SuperFish installed on them. Now they have done so, and yet they're still shipping them with it.
Said another way:
To people who bought their machines previously, Lenovo could (and did) say, "Sorry, we screwed up, but we'll make it right," which could have had mitigating effects in the event of litigation. Now, they're out of any such excuse
Not a big deal (Score:1)
Of course laptops were in warehouses, in transit on slow steaming cargo ships...many with SuperFish will still be sold even though Lenovo stopped installng it. No point to the story
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You watch way too much TV, and Lenovo is already screwing themselves over quite handily, no mystery competitor required.
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It doesn't matter that the story is literally "two people who frequent some other web site say they looked at their neighbor's new laptop that the neighbor said they ordered sometime in early February and received sometime in late February and it's still got Superfish on it. Also, those two same somebodies say that when they ran the official Lenovo removal tool the software wasn't removed, by whi
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let me introduce you do the retail tactic called the Return Merchandise Authorization Center
Lenovo can have a retailer deal with this in 2 ways
1 RMAC all units with date codes prior to %clean date%
2 Ship "update" disc sets that burn the restore partition and reloads it with a clean version (then proceeding with a restore)
bonus for L if the sets have some sort of "Due to a Quality Control Issue we have included a restore media set at no charge" notice on the packet
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I'm cheap, if I were Levono I'd post link and md5 checksum of ISO download of the clean version. Seed a few torrents with it too. Problem solved as far as I'm concerned.
I like Lenovo laptops, Windows problems like this not an issue when I put Linux Mint and OpenBSD on them
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If you intend to run Linux on your Lenovo laptop, make sure everything works without massaging drivers because YOU NEEDS TO ROOT THE BIOS to get the computer to accept a non sanctioned (i.e. bought from some other store than Lenovo) network card. My G50-45 was delivered with a Realtek card that works like crap and I haven't got the Bluetooth part to work yet. I do have an Intel 7260 to replace the network card with IF THE FUCKING COMPUTER WOULD BOOT WITH IT.
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Or just don't buy Lenovo.
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Nonsense, SuperFish easy to remove.
This level of debacle has happened a few times in open source world also.
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From the article, it seems it's not so easy after all, even Lenovo does not succed in removing it. (letting a malware exe on your system is not what i call "removal")
Also, it it was easy, Lenovo would put in the effort to do it for their ware.
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No, you have one anecdote saying it wasn't removed. It is easily removable, I've done it.
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>> No point to the story
Yes, there is a point. If Lenovo was concerned with the security of their customers, they would arrange with their distributors to either remove the malware or recall the hardware.
Continuing to sell it with malware shows they don't care about their customers.
And yes it costs money. That's the cost of deliberately distributing malware.
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Yes, and not all cars are brought back to be upgraded, are they?
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No. The best Lenovo could do is not collecting money and let new users get infected hardware.
The best Lenovo could do is commit to their customers, and get the PCs cleaned before they are sold.
But this kind of thinking is not really in the direction of typical chinese manufacturers, who simply ship the darn thing, whatever the defects. Japanese manufacturers are more commited to their users, when they admit the fault ( which does not always happen)
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Perhaps we should just exclude Sony from my "Japan" remark....
Why... (Score:2)
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Are people still buying them at all? There are tons of companies that haven't broken your trust yet, but one of them! Stop buying Lenovo.
People aren't going to stop buying Lenovo products for the same reason people won't stop eating pesticide laden foods, its too convenient. A company that has used Thinkpads for a decade isn't going to just drop them for another manufacturer when they have so many reusable parts and or other customizations built on or that make use of that hardware. Lenovo won't be strongly affected by this in my estimation.
True that. After all, Sony is still in business and how many times have they screwed the customer? CD-Rom hack. First USB hack. Second USB hack. Linux ripped out of PS3. Half a dozen online failures...
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"This unit is offered at a very special discount. Oh, and it will give your all bank and CC info to Gods Know Who. But it most likely won't eat your dog."
Yep, problem solved.
Is there really a Slashdot-ish user affected ? (Score:1)
Re:Is there really a Slashdot-ish user affected ? (Score:5, Informative)
Your average home user doesn't reinstall anything, and for many reasons.
Even if he or she wanted to, they won't have a viable consumer OS installation disk anymore. They get the "System Recovery Disk" with their new purchase, and it's likely filled with the same Lenovo image that was used to bundle the malware in the first place.
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Much as I like Linux, it isn't the answer to everything. Most people have some Windows programs they want to run on their laptop, and even if the F/OS programs were better they aren't the ones they want.
Moreover, we're talking about laptops, and installing Linux on laptops that were loaded with Windows can be iffy.
JUST STOP IT!! (Score:1)
Simple Fix: STOP BUYING LENOVO MACHINES... They need to feel PAIN because of this fuckup... They won't if everybody keeps on buying them... EVERYBODY needs to STOP NOW!!!
Can't help but laugh (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm seeing so many posts about how people "will never buy from Lenovo again because they can't be trusted" etc etc, and can't help shrug cynically.
I wonder how many of these same people buy Sony products despite not just one, but an entire string of blatantly anti-consumer decisions (of which the rootkit CDs were just one)
Or Microsoft, which has a very long history of not just anti-consumer, but crushing the PC industry and suberting entire standards bodies. But in the last couple years they've thrown a few open source bones... yeah that totally makes up for the last 20+ years of damage they have caused.
So yeah, I hope everyone gets to enjoy their collective outrage while it lasts, cause before you know it you'll find your comments will get modded troll by people who think you're just overreacting.
Re:Can't help but laugh (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the sentiment of your post.
However, for some of us, a principle stands out and isn't just empty words.
I do not now, and have not ever, owned an Apple or Sony product. I disagree with the way they do business, I disagree with the attitude to the consumer, and I disagree with the way they sting the prices on their equipment. There's a number of companies on my blacklist that I have said I won't buy from again. And I haven't.
Microsoft, for example, is a problem to avoid. If you work in IT, it's one company that you are very often required to support, no matter what your personal objections. However, even then, there are steps you can take. I endeavour to give Microsoft as little money as possible, and as much proportioned towards the products I agree with as possible. It's cost them many, many tens of thousands of pounds over the years.
I can't completely cut them out, but their attitude costs them all the time. IE and Bing, however, are totally unnecessary in my environments yet encourage a "lazy endorsement" of their products if you just leave them in, so I ACTIVELY do everything I can to move users off them. I often go to a new workplace and my first policy is "We don't support IE, use a real browser" for example.
Some people will bitch and moan and then go on to contradict themselves in the privacy of their own head. Some of us don't.
My current site is entirely Lenovo hardware on the client end. Be sure that Superfish is going to cost them, hard, next time I'm doing some purchasing. Sure, I might end up buying at a much heavier discount than normal (the Superfish issue cannot and have not affected me because of the way I deploy machines on fresh images as a matter of course) rather than outright blacklisting, but that's reflective of the hassle caused to any place using their hardware for business use. Almost none.
However, guess who people go to when they want purchasing advice? The IT guy. Guess which laptops they are going to be advised to avoid entirely or at the very least create a fuss when buying?
Things like this aren't zero impact. And when Superfish is just a memory, it should still play a part in people's buying opinions. But do you honestly expect permanent blacklisting for ever and ever even after the problem is fixed?
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Find job in IT tech without Microsoft knowledge / support required.
Good luck! You just increased your chances of unemployment by about ten.
At home, yes, no excuse. I have run entirely MS-free home networks for many years. I have brought Linux into schools and other workplaces.
However, I have equally struggled to find any Linux-related work, whereas Microsoft-based support jobs are ten-a-penny. I work in schools and there is one school in my country that I'm aware of that is entirely Linux. Guess how ma
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>> Find job in IT tech without Microsoft knowledge / support required.
Done. .....
http://nofeeofw.blogspot.ch/20... [blogspot.ch]
http://www.linuxinsider.com/st... [linuxinsider.com]
http://www.careerbuilder.com/j... [careerbuilder.com]
Just google it.
Also, my job is MS free ( at leaset 98%)
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Compare to number of Microsoft jobs.
I hear a lot about "Linux needed", the number of jobs asking for it is extraordinarily low. Yes, I can provide work experience of Linux - from small-scale to entire networks. But what you can't do is compete against the thousands of others with similar experience for the handful of jobs going. The ratios are insane.
I'd love to be able to. For many industries these things just don't exist. As I say, in the entire United Kingdom, I know of one school that's Linux-only.
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What will kill MS of its own accord is cloud.
Finally, a real argument for why people should be using the cloud! This is literally the first one that I've seen that might tilt the cost/benefit analysis to the "use the cloud" side.
Although Azure does seem to be doing pretty well, so I don't know how accurate the statement really is.
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I, for one, have a fairly long list of companies I will not do business with, with Sony, near the top of the list, and now Lenovo, working hard to beat out Sony for top place on the list.
Since I'm sort of my neighborhood "tech support", I make it clear to anyone who asks me for advice on what to buy, of my list and WHY these companies are ON the list. I tell them that if they go ahead and buy some piece of tech from one of these companies, they need not ask for my help in setting up the item or ANY kind of
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While you've got a point, I haven't bought a Sony product in over a decade. Everytime I get near to forgetting about them some other deed crosses the screen.
I can't really speak to Lenovo, since I've never bought anything from them, but I'd be really surprised if I ever do now. Previously it was just that I preferred to buy from someone else, now I additionally prefer not to buy from them. This is an additional barrier.
OTOH, I've got to agree that most people don't seem to even notice company quality, bu
Do what you can (Score:1)
Honestly. I don't buy Apple products (unless you count a used iPod for which Apple would get $0 of the proceeds). I used to recommend Lenovo, but now they're off my list. HP, long gone.
Sony is a bit harder to avoid just because they have so damn many subsidiaries and product lines (again, I own a PS3, bought second-hand as were all my games).
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I wonder how many of these same people buy Sony products despite not just one, but an entire string of blatantly anti-consumer decisions
I haven't bought anything Sony since the rootkit.
Or Microsoft, which has a very long history of not just anti-consumer, but crushing the PC industry and suberting entire standards bodies.
Likewise, I have done my best to avoid giving Microsoft even a single dime -- although in practice, that's pretty much impossible to achieve, thanks to their continuing evil practices (such as demanding royalties from Android phone manufacturers).
The solution is simple (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Wipe the drive and do a clean install of Linux. You'll probably also be getting rid of a whole bunch of other bloatware in the process anyway, so Lin-Lin."
Corrected that for you
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That couldn't be further from the truth. I know a lot of normal people (including my aged mother) who don't know a damned thing about operating systems but have no more problem with Linux than they have with Windows.
In terms of ease of use, they achieved parity years ago.
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Enjoy being free tech support when their Linux installation has a problem. Or they want to install some new software. Or hardware. "Why won't {insert Windows software name here} work the way it does on my computer at work?". Etcetera.
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That solution does nothing to actually fix the problem.
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A clean install of Windows from what? Most people don't have Windows install disks sitting around. (I can get them through my work-provided MSDN subscription, but that isn't realistic for most people.)
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This makes me wonder.. (Score:3)
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Not when they're capitalists.