Lenovo deliberately ships PCs with adware?

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I bought a Lenovo Laptop for my wife for Christmas, she loves it. The first thing I did was wipe the HDD and do a clean install of Win 7. It had a fair amount of bloatware, but nothing a few hours of work couldn't fix.
 
Originally Posted By: Miller88
I don't know how the thinkpads are (I know it's just a product line for them), but used to be none of that stuff on them!


Thinkpads are much cleaner. My wife has a Lenovo U460 that came with all sorts of junk and my Thinkpad W530 came with very little junk on it. Both are excellent machines and I would not hesitate to buy another Lenovo again.

While they are a Chinese owned company they keep a decent size workforce in the USA. The service via mail is incredible in turn around. With a $99 warranty from them for 4 years they overnight a box prelabled that gets overnighted back to them. They fix your PC/notebook within 24hrs typically and overnight back.

Apple cannot even manage that and requires you trudge into their store (for me 1hr each way). They cannot always fix your machine within the day either.

I stick with Lenovo mainly due to warranty service.
 
Lenovo does maintain a pretty big presence in North Carolina. Their headquarters used to be in Raleigh (before it moved China way), but they still have a large sales staff, service staff, and engineering staff in Raleigh, and their state-side distribution/packaging center is in Greensboro.
 
That was/is a shocker. Really makes recommending them hard. Although recommending ANY Windows machine is hard to do; you can do so much better.

Lenovo = the old IBM PC and server business (IBM sold x86 to Lenovo) so it makes sense to have so much in Raleigh - that's where IBM had their server/PC business. IBM still does the servicing on Lenovo stuff so that's why the service is good and vast. It's the IBM parts and service network!
 
Deliberate? No

Chinese? Yes. Clearly another issue of quality control. Unless a company is strict, rich and can afford to toss aside lesser quality items (like Apple) quality control tends to always be an issue. Manufacturing certain items there has truly cause some company's reputations to falter (ie. Toyota, Emotiva, Sony)
 
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I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad X140C for my wife last week. I checked it out carefully today and did not find SuperFish or any other unwanted software. I un-installed 3 or 4 trialware things, but nothing serious. I installed AVG, Malwarebytes, Thunderbird, Firefox, and Windows Live Mail. It works well.
 
I just bought a Thinkpad E450 and it's clean. It had about the same amount of bloatware as my previous SL510 from 6 years ago, a moderate amount. Easy enough to clean up.

FWIW this debacle aside (may be tough for some) I quite like Lenovo's offerings compared to some other makes. The Thinkpads specifically have nice keyboards, optional anti-glare screens (I hate the glossy screens which have proliferated), good customization options, etc.

I actually ordered an E440 (outgoing model) at a dramatically reduced price, when it turned out that model was no longer available with the upgraded screen, they upgraded me to the E450 with similar specs at no cost.
 
Originally Posted By: razel
Deliberate? No

It was very deliberate, and Lenovo is now facing several lawsuits as well as a class action investigation. Article
Originally Posted By: From Article
Though Lenovo said it only installed Superfish on PCs sold between September and December 2014, the suit wants to include anyone who bought a Lenovo PC dating back to Jan. 1, 2012.

And even more evidence that it was deliberate.
Article
The CTO discusses the commercial relationship between Lenovo and the company that wrote the ad/malware.

Originally Posted By: From Article
Hortensius (Lenovo CTO) said that Lenovo and Superfish had a “minor commercial relationship,”

And to top it off, the CTO would do it again if it could be "done right".
Originally Posted By: From Article
With that said, Hortensius didn't rule out adware returning to Lenovo PCs.
“I think you do this thing right, people like information and awareness,” Hortensius said, when asked whether adware would be used again.
 
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
Originally Posted By: razel
Deliberate? No

It was very deliberate, and Lenovo is now facing several lawsuits as well as a class action investigation. Article
Originally Posted By: From Article
Though Lenovo said it only installed Superfish on PCs sold between September and December 2014, the suit wants to include anyone who bought a Lenovo PC dating back to Jan. 1, 2012.

And even more evidence that it was deliberate.
Article
The CTO discusses the commercial relationship between Lenovo and the company that wrote the ad/malware.

Originally Posted By: From Article
Hortensius (Lenovo CTO) said that Lenovo and Superfish had a “minor commercial relationship,”

And to top it off, the CTO would do it again if it could be "done right".
Originally Posted By: From Article
With that said, Hortensius didn't rule out adware returning to Lenovo PCs.
“I think you do this thing right, people like information and awareness,” Hortensius said, when asked whether adware would be used again.


Lenovo's only problem here was lack of due diligence. Shipping with programs to target ads isn't unusual. The problem here was the specific software broke https connections, which could be a huge potential security risk.

Originally Posted By: cpayne5
Originally Posted By: dishdude
It's a Chinese company, what do you expect?


Bingo.


Incorrect. It has nothing to do with that. Computer manufacturers shipping with this type of software is not remotely unusual, and pretty much all computers also come with some form of trialware.

The main issue at stake here is the specific software package lenovo was using also happened to break HTTPS connections, renedering them insecure by issuing easily replicable, invalid SSL/TLS certificates. And Lenovo has issued a tool for removal of the software, and has stated they will never be doing business with the company in question again.
 
Awesome Nick R! You have wisely distilled the facts and have a very solid understanding of what's really happened.

I have purchased 3 Lenovo's the past 2 years and will not be joining the law suit unlike what others feeling entitled want to do and are pushing this issue as fact around the internet. Last that I checked quotes from an article referring to a lawsuit aren't fact.
 
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If I found myself in the position to "need" an actual Windows system, I'd be extremely tempted to buy something lacking an operating system and then paying for the OS. This isn't exactly a new problem - just a variation on an old one. Bundled PCs have always had junk installed on them. Some of the worst offenders were back in the Windows 98 days.

All these add ons, over the years, are more concerned with selling another product, rather than improving the Windows experience for the end user.
 
People in high places at my work wanted the Lenovo "boutique" tablet/laptop all in one devices.

You should have seen the junk they put all over these computers.

They have a ton of quirky system utilities and junk that gets loaded on them.

I bought a 200 dollar dell inspiron laptop it had no bloatware on it, just one antivirus client to uninstall and a trial for office 360.

If you have a new lenovo, I suggest going to the lenovo site and downloading the CAB file of drivers, and reinstalling the OS that way, if you have the means.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
If I found myself in the position to "need" an actual Windows system, I'd be extremely tempted to buy something lacking an operating system and then paying for the OS. This isn't exactly a new problem - just a variation on an old one. Bundled PCs have always had junk installed on them. Some of the worst offenders were back in the Windows 98 days.


Buy a business PC; Dell used to have the Vostro line (et al). There is no way a business will pay for a PC with the risk of employees having 20 trialware icons to wade thru.

It is not clear why despite continued bad experiences with home target machines, people seem to feel they are the only choice when purchasing a new computer.
 
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The price tag on a business class dell laptop or workstation will also be double what the model at best buy costs.

That is why most home users get the consumer grade model PC.

HP also has a ton of junk on their consumer grade PC's.

Dell has the least amount of junk on theirs from my experience.
 
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