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Lenovo Saying Goodbye To Bloatware
An anonymous reader writes: "Lenovo today announced that it has had enough of bloatware. The world's largest PC vendor says that by the time Windows 10 comes out, it will get rid of bloatware from its computer lineups. The announcement comes a week after the company was caught for shipping Superfish adware with its computers. The Chinese PC manufacturer has since released a public apology, Superfish removal tool, and instructions to help out users. At the sidelines, the company also announced that it is giving away 6-month free subscription to McAfee LiveSafe for all Superfish-affected users.
More superfish?
I don't understand why people call it "bloatware". This helpful software does many useful things for the user. It essentially subsidizes your $1000 computer into a more affordable $500 or so machine!
The manufacturer gets money for the installation, and you get helpful software that reduces your costs!
What would people do without search aggregators, browser toolbars, download accelerators, etc?
Maybe people should pay the full cost of the software that comes on their machines. Suddenly your "bargain" $350 "bloats" up to a $700. How about paying the full cost for Windows? How about paying the full cost for say hotmail access?
Software isn't , and shouldn't always be "free".
There should be an option for a "bloat" free computer, with the user paying the full cost for software.
We all win with at least a single computer maker stopping the insane practice of selling their customers instead of selling TO their customers.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
...if you read the press release, it's almost like Lenovo is saying that are shocked that Superfish was on their products. This would have been a lot more laudable if they had come to this road to Damascus experience for altruistic reasons rather than as flagrant corporate damage control for getting caught doing something pretty awful to their customers.
They make great hardware, but getting rid of Nitro PDF is particularly annoying, it UAC's more than once, plus Sugar Sync, which even having on our systems violates a client agreement. Crapware needs to die, and die now. I do my best to work from a factory image, hardware seems to be so much easier to deal with that way, but Lenovo makes it quite an annoyance.
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We are starting immediately, and by the time we launch our Windows 10 products, our standard image will only include the operating system and related software, 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.
So, you're still going to be shipping it with trial versions of bloatware McAfee or bloatware Norton or whatever, plus your Lenovo-branded applications (which are really just re-branded bloatware ad-servers disguised as "handy applications for running your 3D camera!"). In other words, it'll be "bloatware-free" except for all the bloatware you're still going to pre-load onto it. Thanks, Lenovo!
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
It would be nice to see Lenovo go a step ahead in the consumer market and not just stop with shovelware, but maybe bundle some security features with their products. This would go a long way to fixing their black eye in the press:
1: A TPM chip shipped off and disabled (as per the spec) on all machines would be useful. Windows Vista and newer can take advantage of this and offer solid encryption that is highly resistant to brute force attack.
2: Add clientside encryption to Reachit with a public format, perhaps getting other vendors on board. This way, users have cloud access... but files are transparently encrypted, similar to BoxCryptor.
3: Have a small SSD read-only volume with a custom WIM present for install media as well as drivers. This way, if a machine needs to be reinstalled from scratch due to a HDD or SSD replacement, this can be done anywhere, and no OS media would be needed. This also is useful for recovery as well, especially if there is a way to get to a PE environment which can be used to save off files, run an offline AV scanner, or fix a haywire application.
4: Add firewalling onto the NICs themselves. Around 10 years ago, some nVidia motherboard chipsets had this capability where the onboard NICs were intelligent enough to have the ability to have their own rulesets. This was quite useful, both to keep the OS protected with IP blacklists, as well as to limit the damage a compromised OS can do (for example, block all outgoing port 25 traffic.) As an added benefit, if someone is worried about vPro or other "ring -1" management tools, those can easily be blocked at the NIC.
I've always wondered why manufacturers reinvent the wheel when it comes to bundled utilities. Why does Lenovo develop its own power controls, wireless manager, driver updater, display management, etc when there are standard OS utilities to handle these things? Isn't it sort of a waste of their time? It's always fun when the 3rd party utils start fighting with the native OS tools for control.
CEO: This Superfish incident has put our credibility in the toilet. Even corporate customers are looking askance at us now, and we didn't put it on their computers. Suggestions?
Executive 1: Lay low until it blows over.
Executive 2: Hire a new PR firm.
Executive 3: Start a social media campaign.
Genius executive: Maybe we should promise not to do stuff like that anymore.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The first thing I uninstall is McAfee. That piece of crap wedges in a VB script interpreter that breaks many of the software installers I have to put on my machines to make them useful. THE worst anti-virus product ever.
It also claims that SAP/Sybase ASE is infected, and deletes critical files from the install.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Apparently they also provide service manuals online for free, and seem generally more repairable than Apple kit according to iFixit. So they probably do deserve a bit more kudos than they get.