
Lenovo's Promise for a Cleaner, Safer PC - JoshTriplett
http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1934&cid=ww:social:152315640:152297239:TWITTER:lenovo:*%20Customer%20Service%20and%20Support&linkId=12599155
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scrumper
"software required to make hardware work well (for example, when we include
unique hardware in our devices, like a 3D camera), ___security software and
Lenovo applications_ __. This should eliminate what our industry calls
“adware” and “bloatware.” "

Which sounds awfully like bloatware. Maybe that's a bit snide; they are at
least addressing the problem and committing not to install stuff which is
really bad.

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andzt
I would love for any manufacturer to offer a "Just Windows" version. On my
last Windows desktop, I freshly installed Windows 7 when it came out and it
was a much better experience than the brand new Windows 7 laptop I had
purchased, but with the additional manufacturer bloat. Immediately re-
installed a fresh version of Windows and the performance and experience
drastically improved.

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Buttons840
Why doesn't Microsoft do something about this? It can't help the Windows
reputation that most of the problems Windows users have are not caused by
Windows, but by the crapware-suite that came with their PC.

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Moto7451
They do on a limited basis. They sell "Signature Edition" computers without
the bloatware/spyware installed.

[http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?SiteID=msusa&Locale=en_U...](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store?SiteID=msusa&Locale=en_US&Action=ContentTheme&pbPage=MicrosoftSignature&ThemeID=33363200)

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jtth
So they give you bloatware (McAfee) to apologize for giving you bloatware.

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JonFish85
If you ask any purveyor of crapware what they peddle, you'd never get them to
admit to it being crapwware. Take YC for instance, with their InstallMonetizer
investment that PG tried to defend as not-crapware[1]. This is a way for
Lenovo to commit to something without committing to anything. They'll be right
back to installing gigabytes of crapware on their laptop lines just as soon as
they have some marketing people type up reasons why it's an enhancement.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711)

~~~
joosters
Exactly. While this Lenovo statement is still a good thing, and IMO shows that
they are at least trying to address a real problem, you have to note that they
haven't specifically mentioned _any_ software that they are going to remove.

In other words, they probably think that all the software they preload is
useful.

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ninjainventor
They're not to be trusted. PC's are a commodity space. The marginally better
quality of a Lenovo isn't worth the tremendous security risk.

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markbnj
It is a good reaction, so they get some props for that I guess. I mean they
had to remove Superfish, but going beyond that and committing to removing all
"bloatware" is at least a good declaration of intent.

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loteck
How can you trust this response when Lenovo still maintains that Superfish was
not a security problem except in the wild imaginations of security
researchers? You can't.

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callahad
Executives far, far removed from the decision to preload Superfish are
unlikely to actually understand the problem. And that's OK. Their job isn't to
understand how these things work, it's to set policies for folks who _do._ As
a result, they've articulated a specific, falsifiable claim about the preload
policy for their upcoming laptops.

Our job is to hold them to their word. If they keep it, the industry ends up
in a much better place.

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pertinhower
"We will significantly reduce preloaded applications." As a primary Mac and
Linux user, it is absolutely incredible to me that any PC that isn't given to
customers _for free_ would have more than zero preloaded so-called
applications by default. I accept that my television, or Google, or Facebook
dumps advertising on me, because otherwise how would they monetize? But since
when did it become okay to load multi-hundred- or thousand-dollar devices, for
which customers have paid dearly, with advertising and bloatware that benefits
only the manufacturer? Are you guys _paying_ for this crap?

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lallysingh
Lower-end PCs typically have something like 5% margin, compared to
substantially more on a mac. And that's assuming you configured the hardware
in a way that someone wanted to buy it before it became semi-obsolete on the
store shelf and has to be sold for even less.

The manufacturers have to make up the money somewhere. With a complex product
at commodity rates, with customers mostly having no idea what the differences
are between them (and for good reason, it's all just a set of nasty
price/perf/quality tradeoffs that I wouldn't want to look at), you compete on
very basic features and the price that they dominate.

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mseebach
That might well be true for many PCs, but the ThinkPad range is pretty high
end and comparable to Macs in both specs and price. As far as I can tell, it's
not just the low-end crap that's affected by this issue?

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lallysingh
ThinkPads didn't have the software installed. Only the lower-end stuff.

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joombaga
They didn't have Superfish installed, but they do come with bloatware.

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PinnBrain
This is a positive step. For now, you can try the Microsoft signature editions
of various pcs. Or a Mac.

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neumino
>> Additionally, we will offer Lenovo PC users affected by this issue a free
6-month subscription to McAfee LiveSafe service

This is definitely the most ironic part.

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arenaninja
I agree. The first thing I do to a new machine is get rid of McAfee/Norton,
leave it to Lenovo to find profit in the midst of what should be a PR
disaster!

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grownseed
I can't help but take this with a pinch of salt. I own a Thinkpad x220t, which
is an amazing little machine (except maybe for the wonky wifi) but I
completely fail to see how most of the Lenovo software is "required".

Take for instance the wifi manager, which crams a huge icon in the corner of
your screen and somehow makes connecting to wifi even slower than it already
is (not even speaking to the atrocious interface). I regularly disable the
thing, yet Lenovo's updates insist on re-enabling it, without my consent. And
this isn't the only Lenovo "required" software to have this behavior. There's
also the system health thing, which will seemingly randomly pop up when I'm
watching a film or playing a game.

I'm really curious, how does Lenovo think this improves user experience?

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drzaiusapelord
We buy these for work. We use our own Windows images because the stock image
is just a nightmare of OEM crap. Its just shocking how much they put there.
Before we used images we would just push them out as-is and it would cause all
sorts of weird and hard to solve issues. One day no one could search their
Outlook. Turns out that there's a Lenovo 'speed boost' service installed by
default. It literally just sits there and then disables the Windows Search
Service arbitrarily. Without that service, you can't search for files, emails,
etc. How that made it to production equipment is mind-blowing. Took a while to
figure out. We would re-index and restart the services, etc but it came back.
There's a lone Lenovo support thread on their website about this where the
customer answers his own question. Even Lenovo support doesn't know about this
junk.

Sadly, the stock Windows experience is pretty pleasant, its just most people
will never experience it. I'm not sure who is clamoring for a 3rd party
"wireless manager" or "update helper" or "speed boosters." Probably no one but
product managers at Lenovo know that without this ecosystem of add-on
crapware, their jobs would probably be eliminated.

The above is just the "business productivity" apps. On their consumer models,
they're chocked not only with a lot of these apps but also tons of 3rd party
pre-loads like multiple ebook readers, Norton AV, Evernote, etc. No wonder so
many people just buy OSX machines. You get just as good, if not better
hardware, and a machine that's usable right out of the box. With PCs, it seems
like these 3rd party companies are the real customer and we're the product.
That's okay with free stuff, but if I'm spending $1,000 or more, I expect to
be treated a lot better.

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nullc
Perhaps they should start by admitting that their prior response to that
debacle was dishonest (or at least "horrifyingly, inexcusably incorrect", if
they'd rather plead incompetence).

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arikrak
Gotta love the passive run-on sentence they start the article with:

> Just over a week ago, the Superfish visual discovery software preloaded onto
> Lenovo consumer notebooks beginning in September 2014 created concern and
> frustration among our customers and the security and privacy communities.

Instead of:

"Sorry, we messed up!"

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lallysingh
I assume they're avoiding admitting fault or damage to make it less easy for
them to get sued?

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falcor84
"For some countries, certain applications customarily expected by users will
also be included."

Does anyone know what this vague clause means? I, for one, have sadly come to
"expect" all sorts of preinstalled crap on my laptops.

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lallysingh
I assumed this meant asian-language input software?

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pXMzR2A
The fact that not a single Lenovo employee ever leaked what Lenovo was doing
prior to discovery makes this statement moot for me.

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Zikes
This is a great move on their part, but would have been much better if
preceded or accompanied by an apology.

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Justsignedup
A good reaction. I will be quite happy if they hold themselves to this promise
as bloatware is quite a problem. If anything they should include Malwarebytes
which gives a free unlimited scanner, but not realtime protection unless you
register. Compared to other antiviruses that just turn off it is a better pre-
install option. But naturally this is a partnership and pricing issue.

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synackal
I don't trust anyone who uses multiple spaces after a period.

