251–260 of 321 posts
I'm hoping the US actually passes European-style warranty and consumer protection laws to force companies to end the practice of adding malware and/or bricking devices and blaming the consumer for it. Until then, hit these companies where it hurts the most: their wallet.
Lenovo left a sour taste for me after they pushed a BIOS update through Windows Update on my daughter's Flex that bricked the device (in the middle of a school-week, while she was doing online school). There were dozens of reports of the same problem from other owners of that model, yet they refused to acknowledge the issue was theirs or offer any self-serve option (I remember most laptops nowadays can re-flash the B…
FWIW i just went through the exact same thing with my surface. "it's time to update" > "you're in an unescapable blue screen boot loop"
Same with my samsung tablet forcing itself to update. "You can dismiss this 1 more time" - why? It's my device I paid for it. It's very tiresome. What device can I buy that's just mine to do as I please. On desktop I'm already on Linux Mint. Looking for alts for phone and tablet.
I recently got a (cheap) Pixel C to try out DivestOS and was very pleased in spite of some device-specific compromises (bootloader can't be relocked, stuck at Android 8.x but with current/on-going patches).
Gentle reminder that Lenovo jumped the shark quite a while ago. The whole Superfish debacle, the spyware, the crapware, the endless stream of shitty decisions. Year after year, the hardware gets worse. Customer support gets worse. The sad thing is that they're still better than everything else out there. Which says a lot about the laptop industry in general.
> The sad thing is that they're still better than everything else out there. They haven't ever been better than Apple laptop hardware, even in Intel-land. There seems to be this common bias in PC laptop evaluation that excludes Apple machines from consideration when doing comparisons. Apple makes the best x64 laptops, and has for years. Sadly, they will stop soon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdote: Over the past few years, I've owned an Asus laptop (thin/light), two Lenovo laptops, and an HP. Before that, a large Dell gaming laptop. Most recently, I had bought the HP Omen 15, but realizing that the screen used PWM below 100% brightness, I sold it and bought a Lenovo Legion 5. The previous Lenovo is a Y540. The Y540 is arguably "good but not great" build quality. If you squint, it looks kind of like th…
PWM?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But because the hardware is proprietary, the length of that simpler tail still depends entirely on Apple's willingness to support it's legacy products.
Apple’s policy is to support all hardware models for at least 5 years, 7 in some jurisdictions.
And it's not just the computer itself but the whole ecosystem that gets the boot periodically. Last year I built a Linux-based 24 track digital studio on the cheap by buying Firewire soundcards that no longer worked on the latest Macs. Great hardware that otherwise still worked perfectly.
Does anyone actually buy Lenovos after what happened with SuperFish? [0] [0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/superfish-to...
ThinkPads are still the name of the game for enterprise laptop deployments. AFAIK, they don't contain any preloaded stuff beyond the OEM app (Lenovo Vantage). Some enterprises prefer the more stripped down Lenovo System Update instead, although I think users may need Vantage to change some hotkey, etc. settings. Still, for a business with stricter security standards, it would be ideal to do a clean reimage of all new…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have always liked the keyboard more. My opinion is that Apple prioritizes how the keyboard looks and how thin it is over the actual function and experience of using it. It blows my mind that people buy their desktop keyboard which is basically a laptop keyboard in small case. I believe the ability to repair or swap components has always been better with Lenovo. Apple beats Lenovo in a lot of other ways though, audi…
Finding a good Mac-layout mechanical keyboard that I liked was a total chore, I eventually got the Vinpok Taptek which I'm really pleased with but I can't find replacement keycaps for the life of me.
You can use adb to remove this kind of crap without having to root the device, can't you? pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.spam.bloatware
For that you need to know the offending APK ID in the first place, and you need to enable ADB access, and install a piece of software on your computer. Seriously, this shit is inexcusable.
In this case, the offending APK ID is "com.tblenovo.lenovotips".
And I am pissed off that I had to learn that to fix a device that I own.