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Lenovo Statement on Superfish

news.lenovo.com

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Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#81

Post by noddingham »

pja wrote: post #32
eropple wrote: post #4

> We have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns. I try to be measured around here, as hard as I can. I can't formulate a polite way to respond to this claim. Lenovo, you are full of shit, and maliciously so. There is no excuse, nor forgiveness, for what you've done here.

Can you ever imagine Apple pulling a stunt like this? No, because it’s astonishingly user hostile: Lenovo should be hanging their head in shame, not making out like it’s no big deal.

The big difference is you don't mind when Apple does things like this. If you have "Hey, Siri" enabled then your phone's microphone is on all the time listening to everything you say. But I don't see a lot of people crying foul over that.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#83

Post by derekp7 »

tyho wrote: post #51

Microsoft seems to have a vice like grip over OEM's regarding preloading windows on every product they sell without exception, IMHO this is a terrible thing, but can't they do at least a little good and prevent OEM's from shipping anything other than a pristine image with no preloaded software? Surely the endless bundled crapware from every OEM just gives Windows a bad reputation in the long term. The popularity of c…

They tried dictating what vendors could pre-load, and were taken to court by the US Justice Dept, along with a large number of states AGs.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#84

Post by xienze »

rockdoe wrote: post #49
geoka9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does lenovo thinkpad have to be the only line of laptops that has a trackpoint by default? How hard can it be to include it for other brands? This is a very important feature for some people and it limits their choice to thinkpads and (AFAIK) some HP laptops.

At a guess, it's patented?

The patent is way expired.

I think it has more to do with the fact that a lot of people just don't like the Trackpoint or (more likely) won't give it a shot, so manufacturers aren't going to invest the time and money to put it on their laptops.

Personally I think the Trackpoint is the greatest thing ever, but I worked at IBM for a long time. Pretty much anyone who has had to use Thinkpads for an extended period of time ends up loving the Trackpoint. But regular people just don't want to give it a shot.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#85

Post by tw04 »

pja wrote: post #32
eropple wrote: post #4

> We have thoroughly investigated this technology and do not find any evidence to substantiate security concerns. I try to be measured around here, as hard as I can. I can't formulate a polite way to respond to this claim. Lenovo, you are full of shit, and maliciously so. There is no excuse, nor forgiveness, for what you've done here.

Can you ever imagine Apple pulling a stunt like this? No, because it’s astonishingly user hostile: Lenovo should be hanging their head in shame, not making out like it’s no big deal.

You mean like with spotlight in Yosemite?

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#86

Post by tormeh »

noddingham wrote: post #81
pja wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you ever imagine Apple pulling a stunt like this? No, because it’s astonishingly user hostile: Lenovo should be hanging their head in shame, not making out like it’s no big deal.

The big difference is you don't mind when Apple does things like this. If you have "Hey, Siri" enabled then your phone's microphone is on all the time listening to everything you say. But I don't see a lot of people crying foul over that.

The difference being that only Apple (and the us gov) can listen in, not the entire world.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#87

Post by tunap »

Alupis wrote: post #45
pja wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you ever imagine Apple pulling a stunt like this? No, because it’s astonishingly user hostile: Lenovo should be hanging their head in shame, not making out like it’s no big deal.

> Can you ever imagine Apple pulling a stunt like this? No Why would you jump to that conclusion? Apple is just a company... and through the right view-port, even something like this can appear to be "consumer oriented" to management ("we're helping customers locate products and services easier"). Recently Canonical thought it was a great idea to bake-in Amazon ads into their search lens... so ads and product placeme…

Actually, reading the NSA hard drive firmware hack a couple days ago rekindled my suspicions about all the MacBook Pro failures a few years back. Apple claimed the hardware was at fault & nothing short of sending off for a pricey, clean-room extraction would get the data back. Much to my clients' relief I recovered all the data from three MBP drives for a lot less than what the 'geniuses' quoted. *It was the HD controller at fault, I managed to get them to mount and read at an extremely slow rate, but in time all was recovered.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#88

Post by tw04 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #78
FooBarWidget wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would SEEM obvious because as techies we hate ads. But you can't extrapolate this to the general population. There was one time when I visited my mother. We started her instant messaging program, and we were presented with special offers. I recognized it as such within half a second, so I almost automatically checked the 'Do not show this again' checkbox. My mother alarmed me: "No, do not make it go away! I want…

I am mindblown too. I thought that it was pretty obvious by now to everyone that ads do not show you the offer that is best for you; they show you the offer that's best for the company, which means you spending more money on something subpar. I find ads anything but useful.

So how exactly do you expect people to find out about your product if you don't advertise it? Even word of mouth requires a first sale, which generally requires... advertising.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#89

Post by userbinator »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #36
tyho wrote: post #27

> The relationship with Superfish is not financially significant; our goal was to enhance the experience for users. I would prefer for this to be a lie than for it to turn out for this statement to be true. Surely nobody at Lenovo honestly belived that ad injection improved user experience?

This would SEEM obvious because as techies we hate ads. But you can't extrapolate this to the general population. There was one time when I visited my mother. We started her instant messaging program, and we were presented with special offers. I recognized it as such within half a second, so I almost automatically checked the 'Do not show this again' checkbox. My mother alarmed me: "No, do not make it go away! I want…

This makes me wonder if any of the people working at Superfish actually use their own products regularly, including this one, and like it. I wouldn't be surprised if they do.

Re: Lenovo Statement on Superfish

#90

Post by Coding_Cat »

meritt wrote: post #37
Coding_Cat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's System76, which are basically pre-loaded Clevo laptops (which are sold under many different names). I have the Galago Ultrapro and am quite happy with it. Good battery life, fast, user-serviceable and a calibrated IPS screen. On release the keyboard was a little off, but the new one is pretty good.

How's battery life? That was always my concern, it seemed to be quite pathetic in comparison to modern 6-12hr competitors.

It depends on what you're doing of course. Normal usage (playing music/Youtube, browsing firefox, coding, opening up some PDFs) gives me about 6-8 hours I'd say, I get about 3 hours of (modded) minecraft, which is quite the battery drain. this is on Gentoo (Awesome as WM) so the background drain is pretty low. It's good enough that I never really pay attention to it.

upower says the battery is designed to store up to 48Wh, with a maximum design capacity of 53Wh.

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