EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: John Coloccia on February 20, 2015, 09:46:59 pm
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Anyone following this scandal? I currently own 3 Lenovo laptops, and had intended to buy more. That's definitely not happening.
Where do I go to find a laptop that's not installed with bloatware from top to bottom? Is there anyone left out there that can be trusted?
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Lenovo tweeted that they are very sorry for getting caught and promised they won't get caught next time. [Source (https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/2wj7zx/lenovo_apologizes_for_superfish_and_publishes_a/)]
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First thing you should do when buying a PC or laptop is to format the harddisk, then install the operating system you want. If it doesn't ship with an original Windows DVD, if you want Windows, but only some revovery DVD, there are cheap versions on eBay, especially the OEM versions which are allowed to sell in most countries. Nowaday most hardware should be auto-detected and the drivers installed, and with this procedure you can be sure that you don't have some crap software installed.
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You don't need to buy a new Windows license if your computer already has one. Just reinstall and activate it using the key printed on the sticker. You may need to use the phone activation for it to work.
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First thing you should do when buying a PC or laptop is to format the harddisk, then install the operating system you want. If it doesn't ship with an original Windows DVD, if you want Windows, but only some revovery DVD, there are cheap versions on eBay, especially the OEM versions which are allowed to sell in most countries. Nowaday most hardware should be auto-detected and the drivers installed, and with this procedure you can be sure that you don't have some crap software installed.
Actually, in many cases you don't need to buy an install DVD if you don't have one. ISO images of the install DVDs can be officially and legally downloaded (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery), without crappy bloat and ad ware.
I would suggest to try this first, and only if your OEM Windows key does not work with retail Windows versions (don't know about Lenovo...), i would suggest to get some OEM install/recovery disk...
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Yeah, I know I can just blow everything away and start over on a new computer, but I just want one to show up right without having to do that, especially on a laptop with 5 bagillion different little drivers and utilities I need to track down to get all the features actually working correctly. I have very little free time available these days, and spending hours futzing around with a stupid laptop is not really high on my list of things to do.
Someone out there must have reasonable hardware and a clean Windows install, no?
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Yeah, I know I can just blow everything away and start over on a new computer, but I just want one to show up right without having to do that, especially on a laptop with 5 bagillion different little drivers and utilities I need to track down to get all the features actually working correctly. I have very little free time available these days, and spending hours futzing around with a stupid laptop is not really high on my list of things to do.
Someone out there must have reasonable hardware and a clean Windows install, no?
How many different laptop models in how many different hardware configurations has Lenovo sold worldwide in the last few years? And yours is...?
That aside, i wonder whether someone would share his/her installed Windows image with his/her registered Windows key...
Really, the best you can do is to get the drivers for your particular laptop model(s) from the Lenove web site, install a clean Windows, install drivers, and create a disk image from that installation. If your two other Lenovo laptops are having identical hardware configuration, you would only need to restor the disk image onto their HDDs (SSDs?)...
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You know, one thing I'll say is that I'm no huge Apple fan, but I did switch my father over to a Mac, and I have a couple of macs kicking around here - an old Macbook Pro laptop from 2007 or so, and a mac mini that I have hooked up to the TV to stream movies and things like that. Maybe another mac mini that I got for some reason, but I can't remember what right now and it's just sitting on a shelf.
All of these computers work just as well as they did the day I bought them, with the exception of the left shift key on the Macbook Pro, thanks to my wife's coffee. I've done exactly NOTHING to them in terms of futzing, reinstalling, rebuilding, fixing, or anything else. They do just work, and I recommend them to people that don't have any Windows specific applications that they need to run.
Nothing against Windows or PC hardware, but Apple's hardware and OSX is seriously well engineered, IMHO.
iTunes, on the other hand, is a steaming pile of crap and is what drove me away from the iPhone.
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There is a lot I like about Lenovo from past experience with them. They have the best keyboards (even though I wish they would have kept the ThinkPad one alone). I found their warranty / support helpful and quite reasonable. After this though, I cannot see myself buying another Lenovo. There are a lot of bad practices in the computer industry but this one is really bad.
I know it won't happen but I wish we were back in the days where you got the actual install media with a computer. Not a recovery CD or anything, the actual install disks (often floppys). How quickly has that been forgotten.
A lot of laptops (especially Macs, but not exclusively) ignore people who do real work on their computers. Lenovo was one of the few who cared about that market. The MacBook Air I have at work has no function keys (hidden behind combinations), has tiny arrow keys, is not upgradable, has very limited connectors, and the touchpad doesn't have any buttons. All this is fine, and maybe perfect for a home user or a typical manager, but doesn't fit anyone who does engineering.
Time to find a new laptop manufacturer. Dare I try HP or Fujitsu?
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Alienware, perhaps. I know they're Dell now. Perhaps the Dell precision (or whatever they're called now) line? I dunno.
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Lenovo itself is like any other Chinese notebook factory...
But ThinkPads are different. I don't like their current "no button" mouse and keyboard (W540) - but the next gen they are saying the will roll back the mouse pad with real buttons.
So if people have asked - I have always said - stay away from Lenovo branded computers - but fine to get ThinkPads - and i think that still holds up.
But else high quality is Apple, HP and Dell - as long as you don't buy the "consumer" models. And stay far far far away from the cheap ones like Lenovo & Acer.
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I have an e545 for my business, so it is a "Thinkpad", but the big problem for me is they just happened to get caught with this steaming pile malware/spyware. What else are they doing they we haven't found, yet? No thanks.