If you bought a recent Lenovo computer you are F'ed (1 Viewer)

[Scott Merryfield]

Old news. This was news in August.

Microsoft has had, for years, step by step instructions to remove pre-installed adware.

Granted...

Superfish is one of the worst.

But that is what you get when you buy a super crap cheap PC.

I wonder what IBM is going to do about it.

Lenovo is not owned by IBM -- they have nothing to do with this, other than the fact that IBM sold its personal computer division to them in 2005. Lenovo is a Chinese-based company.


BTW, when IBM sold its server division to Lenovo last year, the server manager at my company immediately stopped purchasing IBM (now Lenovo) servers.

 

[Charles Smith]

I am thinking at this point, if you can't purchase a signature PC at least buy a retail copy of Windows and just wipe the drive and start from scratch.

-Keith

Agree. And I would. But Sam is right. For a typical user, that's a concept that's just not part of their universe.

 

[KeithAP]

The typical user shouldn't have to worry about this stuff. I really wish a Windows PC company would step up to the plate and offer crap free computers and reasonable prices with good service but that will never happen.


But I do think users shoulder some of the blame here. A very large number of people are making little to no effort in learning how to use a device that they trust with a lot of precious/important information. Family photos/videos, financial records, other personal information, all trusted to a device where the purchase decision was made mostly based on low price.


Microsoft has some responsibility here as well. They created an ecosystem with a lot of flexibility but also a lot of opportunities for OEMs to muck things up.


I wish they would take the gloves off and develop a robust, high quality anti-malware product (as good as anything else out there) to include with Windows and then give away the Windows license for free to OEMs that put nothing else on the computer. I don't know if that would be enough to fix things but it would be a start.


"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."


-Keith

 

[DaveF]

The typical user shouldn't have to worry about this stuff. I really wish a Windows PC company would step up to the plate and offer crap free computers and reasonable prices with good service but that will never happen.

But I do think users shoulder some of the blame here.

I think we ran precisely this experiment, in reverse, over 20 years. It lead to where we are now. You used to buy a windows PC for $1500 to $2500. It came clean, with a handful of pre-installed utilities and demos, of some interet and value. Not crapware or malware.

The race to the bottom continued. People kept buying cheaper and cheaper, over more expensive and better quality. Today, in an effort to eke out a few dollars from rock-bottom prices and slim margins, you get Lenovo installing rootkit hacks into their customers computers.

People have the option to buy a safe, malware-free MacBook for $999. But they don't, they instead buy $399 laptops with crapware to save the money.

So I don't think customers shoulder some of the blame: they shoulder much of the blame. We've collectively spent ourselves into this situation. We've made it clear that price is more important than quality.

I don't know if this entropy can be reversed.

 

[Charles Smith]

Nicely said.

 

[Sam Posten]

Totally agreed. And it's creating a strata of users: people who care about this stuff refuse to use the windows ecosystem and the hoi polloi who are content to pay the cheapest they can and they get what they pay for. You can't fix it, you can only leave it. If you DO care about it and stick with Windows you are dragged down with all the rest.