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Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

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Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#141

Post by JohnTHaller »

rdudek wrote: post #116
ChristianBundy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, are you concerned with the fact that you can't get HP updates after your warranty is up?

Only updates we may be concerned for are BIOS ones with our full disk encryption compatibility with Check Point. None of our systems have any HP software so we don't need updates for those. We also control updates like java, flash, and windows ones too via SCCM.

I'd wager ChristianBundy was referring to device drivers that would come from HP for things like the graphics card or CPU's built-in graphics processor. Often, these start out as an Intel chip but are then slightly modified by the laptop builder so that the base OEM drivers should no longer be used. Many times, these drivers are not distributed via Windows Update. As such, the drivers wind up out of date, continuing to use what was in the base image... sometimes the generic version included on Windows Update. This can often lead to system instability, particularly where browsers come into play on corporate systems (that's usually the most graphics intensive thing they do). Folks like Mozilla and Google maintain driver blacklists to disable hardware acceleration when one of these outdated and buggy drivers is detected (here's Mozilla's: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drive... ). So, the browser will run a bit slower. More importantly, text won't render anywhere near as well... approaching unreadability on some sites.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#142

Post by dagw »

mahouse wrote: post #97
rdsnsca wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is one of the selling points. It has been over 5 years since Apple has sold a computer with any third party software on it.

Out of curiosity, what 3rd-party sw did Apple bundle over 5 years ago?

Apple used to bundle demo apps and games with their computers. I for example remember getting a demo of a Tony Hawk skating game and a couple of other apps with an iBook.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#143

Post by pekk »

zamalek wrote: post #136
lessthunk wrote: post #24

.. reinstall any computer you get from scratch; Firmware Bios spying is of course much harder to get rid from.

At this point I wouldn't put BIOS/NIC spying past Lenovo. They've sternly defended their bad decision and continue to pre-install Superfish. I used to think RMS was paranoid with his fully open source stack, Lenovo has me questioning that belief.

No more than any other vendor. They apologized about Superfish, not that it matters because such apologies are free. Superfish was pretty stupid, but I wouldn't use the preinstalled OS on any laptop anyway just for reasons like this which are NOT specific to Lenovo

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#144

Post by dysfunction »

mikeash wrote: post #81
Jun8 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think one should be surprised. At least two reasons can be given: 1) "crapware" is not well-defined for all users, some utility that absolutely is annoying and unnecessary to medium to advanced users may be found useful by complete novices, e.g. the prototypical "your grandma". 2) The bigger cause is, of course, affiliate money. Companies have little backlash to crapware other than perhaps some lost sales due…

Regarding (1), has any computer manufacturer ever installed anything we might call "crapware" that anyone ever found to actually be useful? Not something that grandma thinks is useful, but something that is actually useful to grandma (not quite the same thing!). The rest is totally right, though. For any behavior by a company that seems to do more harm than good, you can usually trace it back to some decision-maker w…

I find the Lenovo battery manager mildly useful; not amazing, but enough that I installed it on a fresh Windows install on my work Carbon. It just gives me more granular control than the Windows power options.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#145

Post by frenchie14 »

rosser wrote: post #138
btilly wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but do you know why it happens? The US has a protection against double jeopardy. If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing. In most cases this is a good thing. It means that once the case is done, it is really done. But companies have learned how to take advantage of it. If they think they are going to have to fight a class action lawsuit…

Anyone who trots out Liebeck v. McDonald's as an example of a "bad" lawsuit is just demonstrating that they're operating from a position based more on opinion than fact. Liebeck sued McDonald's for actual costs of her medical treatment. McDonald's refused to pay for her injuries or admit fault. The jury awarded the massive punitive damages ($160,000 in actual damages and $2.7M in punitive) of their own volition, beca…

I don't think the parent comment was referring to Liebeck v. McDonald's "as an example of a 'bad' lawsuit." I think they were using it as a point to demonstrate what happens when a company gets sued by a force outside of their control. I know it's easy to jump on someone over this often mis-quoted lawsuit, but please pay more attention to the context next time.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#146

Post by pekk »

gesman wrote: post #34
stanmancan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd format it with a fresh version of whatever OS came on it just to be safe. I actually have always done this when buying pre-built computers just to get rid of all the junk that comes from the manufacturer.

It's challenging due to multitude of vendor/model specific device drivers that are also required to computer to operate (mouse, network, wifi, usb, etc...). Plus you need to have a separate OS license as well to make it work.

Well, in the case of Lenovo you can download those drivers.

It's challenging because most people can't install an OS.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#147

Post by superuser2 »

piyush_soni wrote: post #51
rshaban wrote: post #7

"Notably, Lenovo did not preinstall the Superfish program on any of its computer models that were marketed to businesses or more sophisticated computer users." That's a particularly damning accusation.

I'm wondering how'd they figure out if a user (not business) is a 'more sophisticated' computer user.

Easy: whether they are buying ThinkPad (business/power user) or IdeaPad (someone who could just as easily have bought a Dell Inspiron).

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#148

Post by pekk »

Animats wrote: post #120
acdha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's trying to create a premium “Signature Edition” category with that as the selling point: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...

That's funny. Take a look at that link. Microsoft, itself, is talking about how crappy their own product is in its normally delivered form.

Only because vendors other than Microsoft have control over what's shipped. If Microsoft wants to include something, they won't describe it as crappy.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#149

Post by btilly »

rosser wrote: post #138
btilly wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but do you know why it happens? The US has a protection against double jeopardy. If you've been sued once for something, you cannot be sued again (and again, and again) for the same thing. In most cases this is a good thing. It means that once the case is done, it is really done. But companies have learned how to take advantage of it. If they think they are going to have to fight a class action lawsuit…

Anyone who trots out Liebeck v. McDonald's as an example of a "bad" lawsuit is just demonstrating that they're operating from a position based more on opinion than fact. Liebeck sued McDonald's for actual costs of her medical treatment. McDonald's refused to pay for her injuries or admit fault. The jury awarded the massive punitive damages ($160,000 in actual damages and $2.7M in punitive) of their own volition, beca…

You have made a common mistake. You have pattern matched what I said to commonly said things that you have an opinion on, and then have proceeded to respond on the belief that I said something that I did not say.

I never stated an opinion either way on whether this was a bad lawsuit. My statement was that it was a lawsuit launched without the cooperation of the company. Which is definitely true in that case.

That said I did need to check my facts because I called it a class action lawsuit when it wasn't. But that issue is completely unrelated to anything that you said.

Re: Class action lawsuit filed against Lenovo over Superfish

#150

Post by dagw »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #82
rubbingalcohol wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of these computers don't even come with OS reinstallation media. They tend to have recovery partitions on the hard drives which will only restore the computer to its initial spyware-ridden state. I downvoted your comment because of your implication that spyware wouldn't be a problem if only everyone were as sophisticated as you.

You can just reacquire the installation media from elsewhere and reuse the serial key.

Generally not. Unless Microsoft has changed their policy, you cannot use an OEM key to install a retail copy of Windows.
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