Sure they might be repairable now, but after Superfish I can't trust Lenovo.
Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
121–130 of 255 posts
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#122Do folks have any security concerns with Lenovo? An IT leader at a medium-large US bank recently told me they won't use Lenovo due to security risks from Chinese firmware (or something to that effect, referencing and older incident I don't recall). I've only seen such policies with defense players ten or so years ago. That said, I've owned them personally for 10+ years, so looking for objective thoughts outside repai…
Would that not be a concern for most computers? Aren’t most of these motherboards manufactured in China (or at least close proximity to China? Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.) But older Thinkpads (not sure about newer (~5 years old) ones, certainly not brand brand new models) have great support of alternative firmware such as coreboot and libreboot, other projects that disable Intel ME and the like.
Perhaps, but lots of (older) Thinkpads are supported by Libreboot, so that cuts down on the binary blobs significantly.
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#123Damn, everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they? Once you notice the patterns you see it everywhere. * "This isn't X. It's Y" * "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier. * The em-dash of course * A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness" I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
I recently destroyed the screen on a Google Pixel during a repair following a shoddily-written set of iFixIt instructions. I wish I had checked the comments, where many people complained that the instruction was wrong. It was about a very fragile part of the process, and so it seemed like an error of omission that seemed atypical for iFixIt. It made me suspect the instructions might not have been wholly human written…
I’ve only tried doing a phone repair per iFixit’s instructions once, and the instructions sucked. They explained in excruciating detail how to take the phone apart and then the instructions just ended. No details on reassembly.
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#124Sure they might be repairable now, but after Superfish I can't trust Lenovo.
This was my thought as well. I'm surprised people are so easy to forgive and forget
Edit: a link[1] for those that aren't familiar
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#125Aren’t these the guys that preinstalled a root certificate to MITM you ads? Not something that can be casually forgiven.
I recall Dell and Sony doing something similar. Maybe not with ads but had some kind of root kit. Then again, if you have an Intel processor I guess it’s already somewhat compromised.
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#126Aren’t these the guys that preinstalled a root certificate to MITM you ads? Not something that can be casually forgiven.
Lenovo had a couple black eyes back-to-back. It was 10 years ago now, but trust takes a long time to build and can be lost in an instant. They lost my trust and I don’t see them getting it back. My first laptop was an IBM Thinkpad, and while it was a great piece of hardware, I don’t see myself ever buying another one as long an Lenovo owns the brand.
That’s how I feel about Notepad++ they had an update which would hijack your keyboard and type a message can you open the new window.
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#127Do folks have any security concerns with Lenovo? An IT leader at a medium-large US bank recently told me they won't use Lenovo due to security risks from Chinese firmware (or something to that effect, referencing and older incident I don't recall). I've only seen such policies with defense players ten or so years ago. That said, I've owned them personally for 10+ years, so looking for objective thoughts outside repai…
The bigger threat is the US, which injects spyware capabilities into every AMD, Intel and Nvidia die.
Maybe? The Lenovo Superfish thing was pretty bad.
Anyway, every die? citation needed.
Also. If true, what's the alternative?
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#128Damn, everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they? Once you notice the patterns you see it everywhere. * "This isn't X. It's Y" * "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier. * The em-dash of course * A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness" I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
> I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future. Why would you hope to be more easily fooled?
Not GP but I'm personally hoping that if I'm inevitably doomed to be exposed to this horseshit every day that it becomes tolerable to read. For world-shaking language-based superintelligences, they can't write to save their very expensive lives.
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#129Sure they might be repairable now, but after Superfish I can't trust Lenovo.
This was my thought as well. I'm surprised people are so easy to forgive and forget Edit: a link[1] for those that aren't familiar [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...
Looks like it only affected their consumer lines and not the ThinkPads.
Didn’t Dell and Sony have similar controversies?
Re: Lenovo’s new ThinkPads score 10/10 for repairability
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own T14s Gen4 Intel and Linux support is perfect, even fingerprint reader works. Zero complaints. I'm mostly using it in clamshell mode connected via USB-C to display with backwards charging, it all just works! I'm also using secureboot with my keys, I cleared all MS keys and it didn't brick the laptop. My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not…
What’s wrong with fwupd? I’ll admit that that the CLI is not exactly awesome, but it seems like a fairly clean implementation of the actual UEFI spec for updates.
I disabled possibility of updates in my BIOS, so I must first enter BIOS, enable updates in BIOS, then I have to tinker with my boot configuration as I'm using secureboot with custom keys and no bootloader, I also need to allow changing UEFI boot variables, well, lots of things I just don't want to do for my setup. A lot of moving parts with zero sense over something as simple as update from the USB drive.
Basically right now my setup is super simple and restricted and I have to make it significantly more complicated and insecure to allow fwupd to work.