Your second link is about someone who flashed their own copy of Windows 3.1 into the boot ROM of their own ThinkPad X200. Lenovo didn't put Windows 3.1 there, that user did.
Your first link is about Lenovo's IdeaPad line. IdeaPad and ThinkPad could well be thought of as products from two different companies.
Lenovo was already making laptops when they bought the ThinkPad line from IBM. Their own laptops evolved into the consumer oriented IdeaPad line, while ThinkPad remained the business oriented line.
They're both part of Lenovo, but are largely separate teams with different business goals and philosophies.
In particular, ThinkPads were never infested with any of the stuff you're talking about.
Here is the original notice from Lenovo about this. No ThinkPads are listed:
It's reasonably clear that this separation exists by looking at the hardware build quality too. The general consumer range of Lenovo laptops is absolute garbage.
The biggest problem comes from people recommending Lenovo laptops, without stressing specifically that it's ThinkPads that are being recommended, and not any Lenovo laptop generally.
If you've used either range of laptop extensively, it's very obvious that they're built to very different specs, with very different goals. There doesn't appear to be much (if any) cross team work going on there.
Your first link is about Lenovo's IdeaPad line. IdeaPad and ThinkPad could well be thought of as products from two different companies.
Lenovo was already making laptops when they bought the ThinkPad line from IBM. Their own laptops evolved into the consumer oriented IdeaPad line, while ThinkPad remained the business oriented line.
They're both part of Lenovo, but are largely separate teams with different business goals and philosophies.
In particular, ThinkPads were never infested with any of the stuff you're talking about.
Here is the original notice from Lenovo about this. No ThinkPads are listed:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190303121854/https://news.leno...