And lest we think Lenovo is perfect - they then do THIS....

[Joelist]

http://www.petri.com/lenovo-accused-installing-adware-new-pcs.htm

Basically there are only two explanations here and neither one reflects favorably on Lenovo:

a) They did it intentionally because the money was good, which makes them total A*******

b) They really did not realize what Superfish did, which means the people who build their software images should be fired.

Me, I don't care which one it is as Lenovo really disappointed me here. Their hardware is great (I loved my ThinkPad, the Yoga 3 Pro, and even the Lenovo tablet I had for a while - all had wonderful performance and build quality) and I will still stand by them on that score, but I will advise anyone who buys one to take the time right off the bat and do something like this:

https://www.thurrott.com/uncategorized/1146/clean-pc-walkthrough-windows-8-1-ultrabook2-1

This is a basic step through for utterly "decrapfiying" a PC. Obviously there are other ways and indeed there is a cottage industry for removing OEM bloatware but I always recommend a clean sweep followed by a proper setting of security.

 

[Overmind One]

http://www.petri.com/lenovo-accused-installing-adware-new-pcs.htm

Basically there are only two explanations here and neither one reflects favorably on Lenovo:

a) They did it intentionally because the money was good, which makes them total A*******

b) They really did not realize what Superfish did, which means the people who build their software images should be fired.

Me, I don't care which one it is as Lenovo really disappointed me here. Their hardware is great (I loved my ThinkPad, the Yoga 3 Pro, and even the Lenovo tablet I had for a while - all had wonderful performance and build quality) and I will still stand by them on that score, but I will advise anyone who buys one to take the time right off the bat and do something like this:

https://www.thurrott.com/uncategorized/1146/clean-pc-walkthrough-windows-8-1-ultrabook2-1

This is a basic step through for utterly "decrapfiying" a PC. Obviously there are other ways and indeed there is a cottage industry for removing OEM bloatware but I always recommend a clean sweep followed by a proper setting of security.

When IBM sold Lenovo to the Chinese a few years ago, it went to shit. I am not at all surprised, and I think that Samsung will be caught doing the same thing on their Galaxy line of tablets and phones. Their TVs already record and transmit ambient conversations, even when off.

 

[Joelist]

Actually IBM sold their business hardware division to Lenovo. They never owned Lenovo.

Also Lenovo started out Chinese but nowadays is more of a global company. The majority (over 58%) of the stock is publicly owned and the Corporate HQ is unusual in that there are two - one in Beijing and one in North Carolina. The Chinese government ownership stake is roughly 9% (they own 36% of Legend Holdings which itself owns 34% of Lenovo stock).

Lenovo today (despite the name not being well known in the US) is the #1 PC manufacturer in the world, and they have a reputation for excellent hardware quality especially their keyboards (probably because when they bought IBMs business division they not only made sure to keep the IBM engineers but have let them run the show for all the ThinkPad PCs ever since).

 

[Overmind One]

Actually IBM sold their business hardware division to Lenovo. They never owned Lenovo.

Also Lenovo started out Chinese but nowadays is more of a global company. The majority (over 58%) of the stock is publicly owned and the Corporate HQ is unusual in that there are two - one in Beijing and one in North Carolina. The Chinese government ownership stake is roughly 9% (they own 36% of Legend Holdings which itself owns 34% of Lenovo stock).

Lenovo today (despite the name not being well known in the US) is the #1 PC manufacturer in the world, and they have a reputation for excellent hardware quality especially their keyboards (probably because when they bought IBMs business division they not only made sure to keep the IBM engineers but have let them run the show for all the ThinkPad PCs ever since).

At a recent former company I was Sys Admin at, we were buying ThinkCentres, and they were Intel-based but most of the first 25 of the shipment experienced blue screens and hard drive failures. We bought 5 with hybrid SSD/Sata drives and they were blue screened after only a month or two. Their customer service was horrendous. The choice after that was to go with Dell and rotate machines out every two years.

I would not buy anything made by Lenovo.

 

[Joelist]

Meanwhile I and those whom I know who have used Lenovo have had the opposite experience. Uniformly outstanding hardware and the support team was good too. On the other hand our Dell's were a source of constant problems (CPU heat sink trouble, bad displays, bad PSUs). Granted we used ThinkPads not ThinkCentres but it seems that like anything experiences can vary. And our experiences aside they do have a reputation for great keyboards and excellent build quality.

 

[Overmind One]

Meanwhile I and those whom I know who have used Lenovo have had the opposite experience. Uniformly outstanding hardware and the support team was good too. On the other hand our Dell's were a source of constant problems (CPU heat sink trouble, bad displays, bad PSUs). Granted we used ThinkPads not ThinkCentres but it seems that like anything experiences can vary. And our experiences aside they do have a reputation for great keyboards and excellent build quality.

What Dell might have in the way of problems is greatly mitigated by their top notch customer support which includes onsite repair/replace within 24-hours time. Lenovo does not offer anything close. The ThinkPads are okay (if overpriced for what you get), but the ThinkCentre desktop machines are the units which are most likely to fail. Dollar for dollar, the Dells were a much better value, especially when purchased in bulk. My network now is 95% Dell Latitude laptops with docks, as are half my physical servers. The other servers are HP.

I still prefer Microsoft and Logitech keyboards, considering the abuse they get from the CPAs. They are swapped out for new ones every two years.

 

[Joelist]

We got the same level of support as part of our enterprise agreement - 24/7 priority tech support plus onsite repair/replace within 24 hours. And negotiated their price down nicely too.