231–240 of 435 posts
I have had first hand recent experience with this. I bought a new Lenovo laptop at the start of the month. When I put a new webpage online using my webhost's cPanel to edit the raw HTML everything seemed fine, until a friend asked about a 'best-deals' script running on the page. The Malware / Adware was intercepting & inserting a script not only into pages I was viewing but also pages I was putting online. Very, very…
Never buying Lenovo again.
Interesting that the Superfish job page is looking for an iOS kernel hacker. And by "interesting" I mean "horrifying".
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Unless things have changed, usually the sticker key is only valid for a certain kind of media. E.g. VLK's only work with VLK images, retail keys only work with retail images...
Just recently installed Windows 7 Pro on a HP ProBook thing: - looked up the Windows and Office license keys of the existing installation, using an utility - download Windows 7 disk image from Microsoft and burn on a DVD - take out the old disk with recovery partitions and installation with crappy bloatware - put in a new SSD disk, boot DVD to install OS and install Office - download and install HP specific drivers f…
I have had first hand recent experience with this. I bought a new Lenovo laptop at the start of the month. When I put a new webpage online using my webhost's cPanel to edit the raw HTML everything seemed fine, until a friend asked about a 'best-deals' script running on the page. The Malware / Adware was intercepting & inserting a script not only into pages I was viewing but also pages I was putting online. Very, very…
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And they never preinstalled this on ThinkPads as far as I know.
Still, it ruins trust. Apparently Lenovo is morally corrupt enough to inflict this on their customers. Who knows what else? One can only hope that they keep Motorola as an independent business unit.
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You're so optimistic it hurts "Any engineer" means something in HN, but we're not talking about "people who read HN" levels of engineer here, don't be mistaken. Some people that have had no or limited experience with software are assigned to software projects, and that's the issue with companies like Lenovo.
Operations the size of Lenovo have a fairly intense vetting process before a product goes to market. I find it very hard to believe that no red flags were raised by any of the engineers, managers and especially lawyers who must have screened this "feature" for problems. It seems more plausible that the problem was known from the beginning (it is by design after all) and Lenovo decided to risk it.
How does that go along with a gigantic fuckup like this? Ipso facto there was no vetting, otherwise this wouldn't happen. What did they expect, that this wouldn't come out, that this wouldn't damage their brand even further? If it was done out of malice it is still poorly vetted and incompetent malice.
As a non-technical user with a newish Lenovo laptop, is there some way I can make sure I'm not affected by this?
A ThinkPad
1. Is robust
2. Is reliable
3. Is black
4. Has only useful software pre-installed, from the manufacturer (e.g. the Lenovo thing which updates drivers)
5. Has a TrackPoint
6. Has a consistent keyboard layout
7. Has hardware buttons ('mouse', function keys, etc.)
8. Has a functional screen
Every few months David Hill of Lenovo starts crowing about some new ThinkPad where they've 'innovated' by breaking one or more of these features, usually the keyboard layout or the hardware buttons. There is then a storm in the comments, which is ignored, then they put the thing out, and people skip that model, then they think 'maybe we should listen to our customers' and put it back as it was. Then they make the same mistake again.
The last two X1 Carbons are a perfect example of this. They turned the TrackPoint buttons and function keys into 'touch' buttons. Everyone said it was a bad idea, but they did it anyway, then quickly reversed the decision for the next iteration.
They're going to keep making this sort of mistake, because there's a problem in understanding their customers which doesn't seem to be getting fixed - so it's probably at a high level.
What I'd like to see is another manufacturer step up and make a ThinkPad-ish line, so that Lenovo can be taught a lesson by having their customers abscond. They might then realise that they can't keep doing this and put in place a policy of keeping a line of ThinkPads for their ThinkPad-loving customer base.
Now that they've diluted the brand by making some terrible laptops with ThinkPad stamped on them, though, (W, E, L series, etc.) they should probably have some other mark on their 'proper' ThinkPads, i.e. their X and T series.