Lenovo deliberately ships PCs with adware?

[Nick R]

Any self respecting IT department at a decent size company won't use the default image that comes on any computer anyway. Most will have their own customized image for security, and management. Group policy settings, and other things. This should not have affected any company which actually does things properly when getting new computers.

Originally Posted By: JustinH
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.


Dell also offers a large chunk of their business lineup with Ubuntu. Since as I mentioned above most companies don't use the default image anyway, this is a good way of saving money.

 

[demarpaint]

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.

All these add ons, over the years, are more concerned with selling another product, rather than improving the Windows experience for the end user.


I agree. What I did with my wife's computer was download the ISO image for Win 7 pro and burned it. I backed up all the drivers. I wiped the HDD did an install, put in the drivers, and did the windows validation process. I now I have a nice clean install with no bloatware or junk. Going forward if I'm buying a Windows machine I will do that procedure again. No hassle removing junk, and I can have the OS exactly the way I want it.

When I finished I cloned the HDD. Then I installed all the fixes, made sure there were no conflicts and cloned it again. Then I put in the AV, and the software I wanted ran it a few days. I made one final clone of the HDD. It sounds like a lot of work, it really isn't. Now a full system restore can be done in less than 15 minutes if anything bad happens.

What bothers me is all companies have bundled in [censored], and many have a trial copy of Office taking up a ton of space. The clean install frees up a lot of space, and has its benefits over manually removing all the junk. I'm sure there might be better ways, but for a non IT guy that's how I did it.

 

[Pop_Rivit]

Originally Posted By: Nick R
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.


That's utter nonsense.

Lenovo partnered with a company that went way beyond putting some easily uninstalled trialware on the desktop. Even without the https issue they never should have installed the software, and the CTO said that in an open letter on the Lenovo website.

Installing an SSL hijacker is downright stupid. Installing Superfish was downright stupid. Superfish is a downright sleazy company that wrote software that compromises the security of your entire machine. A software company cannot integrate an “SSL hijacker” into its product without having some idea of what it’s doing, and Superfish knew exactly what they were doing.

You can downplay what they did all you want, but the very fact is they seriously compromised security of their customers while attempting to boost their own bottom line, and they got caught. What they did was both stupid and incompetent, and any company that acts with that much disregard for their customers deserves exactly what they get.

Thankfully some of us have higher standards and expectations of the companies with whom we do business.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
Originally Posted By: Nick R
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.


That's utter nonsense.

Lenovo partnered with a company that went way beyond putting some easily uninstalled trialware on the desktop. Even without the https issue they never should have installed the software, and the CTO said that in an open letter on the Lenovo website.

Installing an SSL hijacker is downright stupid. Installing Superfish was downright stupid. Superfish is a downright sleazy company that wrote software that compromises the security of your entire machine. A software company cannot integrate an “SSL hijacker” into its product without having some idea of what it’s doing, and Superfish knew exactly what they were doing.

You can downplay what they did all you want, but the very fact is they seriously compromised security of their customers while attempting to boost their own bottom line, and they got caught. What they did was both stupid and incompetent, and any company that acts with that much disregard for their customers deserves exactly what they get.

Thankfully some of us have higher standards and expectations of the companies with whom we do business.


Gotta agree with Pop here. This was the equivalent of shipping their computers with Conduit pre-installed. It was an extremely stupid move and one that has left significant egg on their face.

I don't know whose idea it was to partner with a shifty adware vendor but I sincerely hope this has been a lesson learned for them.

 

[razel]

Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
That's utter nonsense...

Thankfully some of us have higher standards and expectations of the companies with whom we do business.


That's the utter stench of entitlement. It's what currently defines men. Men will roll their lessons off from life and move on. Boys and babies will cry because they want and keep wanting.

Like I mentioned I purchased 3 Lenovos and if this issue really stained my underwear this much, I'd just change and wash my own underwear and just won't give them my business. It sounds like you want retribution so does that mean you want someone to take care of you to change your underwear?

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: razel
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
That's utter nonsense...

Thankfully some of us have higher standards and expectations of the companies with whom we do business.


That's the utter stench of entitlement. It's what currently defines men. Men will roll their lessons off from life and move on. Boys and babies will cry because they want and keep wanting.

Like I mentioned I purchased 3 Lenovos and if this issue really stained my underwear this much, I'd just change and wash my own underwear and just won't give them my business. It sounds like you want retribution so does that mean you want someone to take care of you to change your underwear?


Your commentary makes no sense and reads to me like you just cant take the fact that your precious Lenovo selection might not be the pristinely optimal selection due to this egg-on-face situation. Its like the people who have to make up all kinds of excuses for their reasoning to ship jobs offshore by buying things from Harbor Freight which are easily obtainable from a domestic source.

I cant personally comprehend why anyone would buy a pre-built desktop, or accept all that garbage on a pre-built laptop. Its one of the things that fed me up with consumer windows machines (being a long term mac user since the early 1990s, who has also owned my large share of windows machines and use them regularly at work).

If I had a trial of a Lenovo machine and found all that junk on it, I too would return it due to a higher standard of those with whom I do business.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
I agree. What I did with my wife's computer was download the ISO image for Win 7 pro and burned it. I backed up all the drivers. I wiped the HDD did an install, put in the drivers, and did the windows validation process.

My last Windows box at home was in the Win98 days. It had a bunch of junk, but fortunately, it came with a real Windows CD, so I could start all over. The addons came with their own CDs, too, so I chose the one package that had any use to me (the burner software), and left the rest off once I reformatted and reinstalled. SP1 was a bit of a nightmare on dialup, but I digress.

 

[simple_gifts]

Quote:

I cant personally comprehend why anyone would buy a pre-built desktop, or accept all that garbage on a pre-built laptop. Its one of the things that fed me up with consumer windows machines (being a long term mac user since the early 1990s, who has also owned my large share of windows machines and use them regularly at work)


MS and its associates have built a near dystopian world of computing where mere accomplishment of a task without an issue or annoying interruption is a triumph.

100s of millions believe this is the way it needs to be.

People handily can defend a $35K car over the purchase of a $13K car for the 2 hours they might be driving a day, but when it comes to purchasing a tool that might be used for 4 or more hours a day gravitate towards the cheapest and most difficult path, a $500 preconfigured windoze machine; this I will never understand.

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
Originally Posted By: razel
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
That's utter nonsense...

Thankfully some of us have higher standards and expectations of the companies with whom we do business.


That's the utter stench of entitlement. It's what currently defines men. Men will roll their lessons off from life and move on. Boys and babies will cry because they want and keep wanting.

Like I mentioned I purchased 3 Lenovos and if this issue really stained my underwear this much, I'd just change and wash my own underwear and just won't give them my business. It sounds like you want retribution so does that mean you want someone to take care of you to change your underwear?


Your commentary makes no sense and reads to me like you just cant take the fact that your precious Lenovo selection might not be the pristinely optimal selection due to this egg-on-face situation. Its like the people who have to make up all kinds of excuses for their reasoning to ship jobs offshore by buying things from Harbor Freight which are easily obtainable from a domestic source.

I cant personally comprehend why anyone would buy a pre-built desktop, or accept all that garbage on a pre-built laptop. Its one of the things that fed me up with consumer windows machines (being a long term mac user since the early 1990s, who has also owned my large share of windows machines and use them regularly at work).

If I had a trial of a Lenovo machine and found all that junk on it, I too would return it due to a higher standard of those with whom I do business.


You have clearly never worked in enterprise. No business is going to build custom PCs instead of bulk buying off the shelf stuff from Vendors. And obviously you cna't just go out and build your own laptop. But this is the reason as I said in my last response, why any decent IT department has their own image, and the pre installed OS never even sees the network.

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
I agree. What I did with my wife's computer was download the ISO image for Win 7 pro and burned it. I backed up all the drivers. I wiped the HDD did an install, put in the drivers, and did the windows validation process.

My last Windows box at home was in the Win98 days. It had a bunch of junk, but fortunately, it came with a real Windows CD, so I could start all over. The addons came with their own CDs, too, so I chose the one package that had any use to me (the burner software), and left the rest off once I reformatted and reinstalled. SP1 was a bit of a nightmare on dialup, but I digress.

There are none of these issues with Linux.................

 

[simple_gifts]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
I agree. What I did with my wife's computer was download the ISO image for Win 7 pro and burned it. I backed up all the drivers. I wiped the HDD did an install, put in the drivers, and did the windows validation process.

My last Windows box at home was in the Win98 days. It had a bunch of junk, but fortunately, it came with a real Windows CD, so I could start all over. The addons came with their own CDs, too, so I chose the one package that had any use to me (the burner software), and left the rest off once I reformatted and reinstalled. SP1 was a bit of a nightmare on dialup, but I digress.

There are none of these issues with Linux.................

http://dottech.org/127382/how-to-uninstall-remove-amazon-shopping-lens-ubuntu-linux/

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: Nick R
Originally Posted By: JHZR2


Your commentary makes no sense and reads to me like you just cant take the fact that your precious Lenovo selection might not be the pristinely optimal selection due to this egg-on-face situation. Its like the people who have to make up all kinds of excuses for their reasoning to ship jobs offshore by buying things from Harbor Freight which are easily obtainable from a domestic source.

I cant personally comprehend why anyone would buy a pre-built desktop, or accept all that garbage on a pre-built laptop. Its one of the things that fed me up with consumer windows machines (being a long term mac user since the early 1990s, who has also owned my large share of windows machines and use them regularly at work).

If I had a trial of a Lenovo machine and found all that junk on it, I too would return it due to a higher standard of those with whom I do business.


You have clearly never worked in enterprise. No business is going to build custom PCs instead of bulk buying off the shelf stuff from Vendors. And obviously you cna't just go out and build your own laptop. But this is the reason as I said in my last response, why any decent IT department has their own image, and the pre installed OS never even sees the network.



Brain dead desk jockeys might use off the shelf machines, but those of us who do real things with computers, like physics based simulations, finite element analysis and molecular dynamics work, amongst a ton of others, Do indeed often get custom stuff despite the enterprise scenario.

And enterprises often do haven heir own disk images that are used, so while the hardware might not be all custom selected for the desk jockeys, the disk image may be customized to the enterprise. The hardware may also be selected specific to the range of uses and/or the budget, amongst other things.

And as I said, laptops are harder, but it's still quite doable to not have to deal with all that garbage.

Personally I just run windows as a vm in Mac, and it's a clean, standalone install. At work, the "enterprise" machine that I have has a custom image purpose specific to where I work. The other technica machines running instruments or doing real computing are all custom with clean installs on them.

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
There are none of these issues with Linux.................

Of course - having burner software and compression tools right at hand makes far too much sense for Windows.

simple_gifts: I'm far more annoyed with crippleware then a sensible adware program. Back in the day, I used to use Eudora's ad sponsored email program, since I found it far more functional than Microsoft's or Netscape's contemporary competition.

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
I agree. What I did with my wife's computer was download the ISO image for Win 7 pro and burned it. I backed up all the drivers. I wiped the HDD did an install, put in the drivers, and did the windows validation process.

My last Windows box at home was in the Win98 days. It had a bunch of junk, but fortunately, it came with a real Windows CD, so I could start all over. The addons came with their own CDs, too, so I chose the one package that had any use to me (the burner software), and left the rest off once I reformatted and reinstalled. SP1 was a bit of a nightmare on dialup, but I digress.

There are none of these issues with Linux.................

http://dottech.org/127382/how-to-uninstall-remove-amazon-shopping-lens-ubuntu-linux/


If that came with Linux Mint 17.1 I haven't noticed it,,,,yet......And if all I have to do to remove it is paste 1 line into a terminal I'm still ahead of the game.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
If that came with Linux Mint 17.1 I haven't noticed it


It doesn't. Ubuntu (specifically, only the version featuring their Unity desktop) is the only Linux distro that ships with these "scopes".

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: uc50ic4more
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
If that came with Linux Mint 17.1 I haven't noticed it


It doesn't. Ubuntu (specifically, only the version featuring their Unity desktop) is the only Linux distro that ships with these "scopes".


I thought so, I saw nothing of the kind, and I've installed Mint 17.1 on over a dozen machines now.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Nick R


You have clearly never worked in enterprise. No business is going to build custom PCs instead of bulk buying off the shelf stuff from Vendors. And obviously you cna't just go out and build your own laptop. But this is the reason as I said in my last response, why any decent IT department has their own image, and the pre installed OS never even sees the network.



I have and it still bothers me. So where does that leave us? Just because a machine is reimaged before deployment doesn't make the company who made the product's choices to ship various devices in their lineup with malware more palatable.

This has nothing to do with this happening in the Enterprise; Lenovo said it didn't affect their business desktops/notebooks. It is about the practice of teaming up with a shady vendor to reap additional revenue at the potential expense of the security of your customers. THAT is the issue here. Whether we can get around it through a re-image, fresh install...etc is irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[simple_gifts]

It appears some machines are still shipping with the software

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/03/...novo-customers/

Quote:

"Lenovo may be saying they haven't installed Superfish since December, but the problem is that they are still shipping out systems with Superfish installed," Buddine said. "The Windows build had a date of December. They apparently aren't sorry enough to re-image the computers they have in stock to remove the problem and they're still shipping new computers with Superfish installed."

With the discovery the PC was vulnerable, Trakulthai downloaded and ran Lenovo's official Superfish removal tool, which the PC maker states will "ensure complete removal of Superfish and certificates for all major browsers." But as images Trakulthai provided will attest, that too was an exaggeration.


curious why the mass deception and denial that is unravelling the entire society is now being coopted as a business policy; i expect they will achieve similar results

 

[BearZDefect]

simple_gifts, thank you for the update.
IMO, the behaviour and attitude from Lenovo is outright unacceptable.
Whatever some people may like to say of HP and Dell, they have not pulled a scam like this.