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Lenovo Software Update Stealthily Installs Adware 186

Posted by timothy from the if-goodwill-means-absolutely-nothing-to-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A recent Lenovo automatic software update has the great feature of displaying annoying pop-up ads for Lenovo products. What's worse, it appears that many users are unable to turn the advertisement 'feature' off, subjecting them to pop-ups every couple of hours. Gee guys, a note about your 20% off sale in my e-mail wouldn't have bothered me that much, but you really had to pop up over top of my PowerPoint slides? I'm sure that all of my office colleagues will be running to order ThinkPads ..."
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Lenovo Software Update Stealthily Installs Adware More

Lenovo Software Update Stealthily Installs Adware

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  • Wait... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:36PM (#28469793) Journal

    It hid some guy's PowerPoint presentation? I'd consider that a feature not a bug.

    • Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TommydCat ( 791543 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:42PM (#28469883) Homepage
      Funny, but this is a serious credibility whack as their products are considered top notch for business. They'll find out when they interfere with business being done, it's a long fall down...
      Somehow I think someone in management is busy whacking the undo button as furiously as possible as the media exposure rises.

      • Re:Wait... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Stargoat ( 658863 ) <stargoat@gmail.com> on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:28PM (#28470599) Journal
        I will preface this by saying that until today, I was an IBM / Lenovo shop with over 150 PCs in production.

        This does not take a serious whack at Lenovo's credibility, this completely destroys it. I was willing to overlook crappy drivers and twenty hotfixes to make their garbage laptops work. But this is the straw that broke the camel's back. If I need a new laptop for my users, I will be getting Toshiba. I will be looking for a new desktop manufacturer as well.

        • Re:Wait... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:34PM (#28470665)
          Toshiba can't give you the same SKU globally. Of course, we're a lot bigger organization - 90,000 machines, half of them notebooks - all of the notebooks Lenovo. No large company allows the Lenovo software (if it is even installed; it isn't on ours) to auto-update. So we will never notice this. It wouldn't update anyway even if it was loaded since our users are not administrators. If it wasn't for seeing this on Slashdot I'd never see it. BTW, these notebooks seem to be pretty darn good. Their docking solutions seem about the best available.

          Since you are looking for business desktops, take a look at the dc7900 and later from HP - they are pretty nice machines (we've been using HP for our desktops).

        • Re:Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:37PM (#28470699) Journal
          Unless Toshiba's build quality has improved markedly in the past couple of years, I'd urgently advise not going down that road. We had 30-odd Toshiba tablets in service here, and they were hell. Shoddy build quality, horrendous shovelware, near-worthless driver download site. Our experience with both Dell and HP has been markedly better.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Prosthetic_Lips ( 971097 )
            Talking from the other side, Dell laptops are not as good as they used to be. I know people in college (mid-size state college), and of the computers with connection problems, ALL of them were Dell computers. No, not the odd Macintosh, or the no-name. Dell.

            I'd like to hear from other people's experience about Dell laptops; are they as bad as the college kids report? Or is it something that the college is doing that whacks out the Dells?

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by hmar ( 1203398 )
              My own experience with Dell laptops has been pretty positive. We use elusively Dell for Laptop and Desktops. I find that if you stick with the Latitude or Precision series, they tend to hold up pretty well. I am less impressed with what I have seen of the Ispiron series.

            • No, not the odd Macintosh...

              I agree. There is nothing odd about Macs being in for repairs. I've got 7 to work on right now.

            • The Inspirons have, traditionally; been pretty cheesy; but the Latitudes are solid enough(not what I'd call elegant, putting a T series or a Macbook in the same room is hardly fair; but more or less solidly constructed and comparatively cheap).

              I've been responsible for dealing with 32 Latitudes, all used pretty much daily by middle school students, and they have held up pretty well. I've swapped some keyboards, mostly from kids pulling keys off, a few hard drives, and a few have suffered (cosmetic) cracks
            • It's something the college kids are doing to whack out the Dells. College students will try anything on a laptop. College kids will also ignore the 3 yr warranty their parents bought with the laptop so the laptop is trashed quickly and they can ask their parents to buy a new laptop.
              • No, no. College students will wait for the 3 year, "You break it, we fix it" policy that they bought when they got the laptop to be *almost* expired . . . and then drop it down the stairs.

                Twice.

                I haven't - my Inspiron 600m is great. But there were an awful lot of new laptops in class my senior year . . .

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      That's gotta be a marketing suicide!

  • Hmmm. (Score:5, Funny)

    by y_axis ( 815085 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:38PM (#28469827)
    Annoying ad pop-up or Death by PowerPoint? Nope. Can't decide.
    • "Well, we're out of ad pop-ups! We only had three bits and we didn't expect such a rush. So what do you want?"

      "Well, so my choice is 'or Death by Powerpoint'? I'll have the chicken then, please."

  • No kidding! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by C_Kode ( 102755 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:38PM (#28469831) Journal

    I ran into this problem the other day. It ask you if you do not want to show the ads anymore, but it doesn't accept your answer and shows them over and over. I finally figured out what app was causing it and disabled it in msconfig. I can't remember what it was right now, but when I get home I will reply to this with the name of the app to disable.

    btw, I got the adware when I installed the Thinkpad Wireless software.

    • Please do elaborate on your remedy.

      I, too, have seen the pop-up, and checked "don't show again", and haven't seen it since, but I should go and disable the offender properly.

      Thanks.

    • Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Skuld-Chan ( 302449 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:06PM (#28470275)

      If you uninstall "message center plus" it fixes it.

    • Re:No kidding! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Snowblindeye ( 1085701 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:15PM (#28470419)

      I finally figured out what app was causing it and disabled it in msconfig. I can't remember what it was right now, but when I get home I will reply to this with the name of the app to disable.

      According to the article its called Message Center Plus. Here's uninstall instructions from the linked thread:

      Just go to control panel and uninstall [Message Center] in add/remove programs.
      Next time you use System Update when it tries to reinstall Message Center Plus, click on the plus sign and instead of selecting it in the enlarged menu choose hide the update. Then you won't see it next time you run System Update. Of course if Lenovo brings out new releases of Message Center Plus you will have to hide them too.

      And here, also from the thread, instructions to disable it without uninstalling:

      start-->runs-->type msconfig--->go to menue tab --> startup ---> in the list of startup items--->
      unhook
      [ ] MCPLaunch
      &
      [ ] Scheduler_proxy
      -->apply--> ok then a restart is required--> system
      after restart
      -->set in the upcoming message a hook , so that it next time didnt comes up..

    • I haven't had to deal with this yet, but I disabled most of Lenovo's start-up junk a while ago by using "autoruns". It has a nice interface and lets you hunt down running processes, and then gives the option to disable them permanently. Made booting XP a lot faster.

      http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx [microsoft.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by murphyd311 ( 1364187 )
      Yes, it's called message center plus. It's an extremely easy uninstall, however they mask it as an 'update' when it is really just adware. Bad move on Lenovo's part.
      And my entire (large) company uses Thinkpads, I bet the helpdesk is going nuts today.

  • this is dumb (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:39PM (#28469833)
    This is the reason that I build my own computers whenever possible - the manufacturers install crap upon crap on your box. This is just taking it to the next level.

    I wonder what it would cost to build computers without the annoying shit installed. Is that all that's making them profitable?

    • Where do you buy an empty or barebones laptop case and the components for it?

      • Re:this is dumb (Score:4, Informative)

        by Captain Splendid ( 673276 ) <capsplendid@NoSPam.gmail.com> on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:50PM (#28470029) Homepage Journal
        newegg.com [newegg.com], where any serious builder does his shopping.

        • Re:this is dumb (Score:4, Insightful)

          by fafaforza ( 248976 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:54PM (#28470095)

          Wow, look at that. No TrackPoint? Check. Build aesthetics that make my phat NintendoDS look slim and elegant? Check. Right.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 )

            No TrackPoint?

            Laptops still have those?

            Build aesthetics that make my phat NintendoDS look slim and elegant?

            Not all of us care how our machine actually looks.

            • No TrackPoint?

              Laptops still have those?

              All useful laptops have them. So, basically just ThinkPads.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Khyber ( 864651 )

                Useful? Yes, when I'm touch-typing and the fucking trackpoint acts as a damned button it's being REAL USEFUL for me and my productivity.

                No thanks. Any free laptop that I get that has a trackpoint gets it burned right off.

            • Of course. Trackpoints are pretty much strictly better than touchpads.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

          Looks like it is not where the serious barebone laptop builder does their shopping.

          Not a single one of the three "barebones" notebooks Newegg offers is something I would base a system on. All have either Intel integrated graphics or ATI graphics, no NVidia-based options. Every time I've dealt with ATI's drivers (last was on my ex's Dell Inspiron 600M) it's been a nightmare.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Colonel Korn ( 1258968 )

            Looks like it is not where the serious barebone laptop builder does their shopping.

            Not a single one of the three "barebones" notebooks Newegg offers is something I would base a system on. All have either Intel integrated graphics or ATI graphics, no NVidia-based options. Every time I've dealt with ATI's drivers (last was on my ex's Dell Inspiron 600M) it's been a nightmare.

            Search for "Clevo" laptop shells. They have graphics from integrated to a 280M, meaning they span the entire range. Sager sells a lot of systems based on Clevo, for instance. Some places will prebuild for you at oddly good prices with a lot of customizability, like choosing which heatsink and thermal paste to use. The same places will give you the prebuilt system with no OS, if you'd like a clean start. Or you can just buy Clevo barebones laptops and put them together yourself.

        • If only the site operators were as serious..

          Other Slots: 1 x Express Card 34 / 54 Slot
          Wide Screen Support: Yes
          Screen Revolution: 1900 x 1200

          sigh...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Abreu ( 173023 )

        System76 [system76.com] has some nice laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled.

        Of course, Ubuntu-haters will probably argue that the original poster wanted "no annoying shit installed" but I'll say that Canonical's OS is my current choice.

    • I wonder what it would cost to build computers without the annoying shit installed.

      Apparently, thirty bucks [chron.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 )

        It is frequently speculated that the OEMS get paid more for the adware than the Windows license costs them. So they can actually offer the PC with crapware cheaper.

        For those with decent computer skills this means buying the PC as it is and reformatting the disk. Of course, when we are talking desktops some of us have very specific ideas of which components they want. In that case, build from components. :-)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Showered ( 1443719 )

      What I did with my Dell 700m back in the day was buy it, unwrap it, boot it up and format with a XP Home OEM disc I downloaded off the web. I just used the same license key and didn't experience any WGA notification issues. I then downloaded the drivers for the graphic, chipset, etc. and had a fresh new installation without the bloat.

    • So, I'm wondering - when this computer breaks (and it will - multiply chance of failure by the number of machines built), who's supporting it? You? I'm not sure I want to depend on some guy who may or may not have the time (sorry busy this week, wife just had a death in the family, sorry my kid is sick, my car broke so can't visit your office til next week, I got hit by a car yesterday and can't help you, or any of a thousand other [legitimate] excuses.)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tibman ( 623933 )

        There's more than one person in the world who can fix your computer... and you won't have to mail it in to anyone. There's probably a mom&pop computer repair shop down the road from you too, if you want professional tech support. Not only that but each individual part has a factory warranty as well.

        A home built machine doesn't mean some guy glued a bunch of old TVs together, it's a controlled assembly of components from (most likely) well known companies. It's not like building a Car from parts and m

    • Re:this is dumb (Score:4, Informative)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:11PM (#28470359)

      I just bought my brother a little lenovo and was shocked at the amount and general crapiness of the lenovo apps it came with. One of them was crashing at bootup. Its amazing how bad the situation is with OEM crapware nowadays.

      I spent 30 minutes doing uninstalls. Err no thanks Lenovo, I dont need your unstable wireless manager when the MS one is just fine.

      Once I cleared it all it ran like a top. I wish MS would step in and stop them from ruining otherwise decent laptops.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Deathlizard ( 115856 )

        How new is it? If it's very new and nothing is on it yet, then reinstall the OS without the installed software. This doesn't work on all systems, but most lenovo systems have this option.

        It's different depending on Type. If it's Thinkpad, it's the blue Thinkvantage button at startup. On Ideapads it's usually F11 or enter. anyway, You want to boot into Thinkvantage rescue and recovery.

        Once your in there, switch to advanced mode, select "Restore your system", from there, select if you want to back up files an

      • I spent 30 minutes doing uninstalls.

        Only 30 minutes? I envy you.

      • I wish MS would step in and stop them from ruining otherwise decent laptops.

        As much as I hate all that crap, I wouldn't wish that in a million years.

      • I wish MS would step in and stop them from ruining otherwise decent laptops.

        Microsoft wishes it could step in as well. The reason they don't, is in the past this has been treated as Microsoft "abusing their monopoly", with everyone jumping in to sue them, hence today they must allow OEM to tweak the Windows setup any way they wish before deploying it in their laptops.

  • Lenovo has officially jumped the shark (Score:5, Informative)

    by religious freak ( 1005821 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:39PM (#28469849)
    The last thing Lenovo wanted to happen is to dilute the Thinkpad brand and screw up a good thing, when they purchased thinkpad from IBM. Knowing this, I bought a Thinkpad, and the thing totally blows, their customer service is bad and they install way too much crapware on the PC by default (even more than the average manufacturer). Way to go guys...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      The thing is, they had the easy restore that made it easy to do a fresh install with all crapware removed.

      I was a big supporter, as it was way better than running PC Decrappifier, now this is totally the suck.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        Interesting, the system restore disk doesn't come with the crapware? That is very unusual in OEM world from what I've seen.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 )

      I realize it shouldn't be required, but it's not difficult to go through the Add/Remove list and get it all out. They're nice enough to have similar-looking icons for all the crap that does nothing except hang. One of their helpful applications refused to close, so every time I shut down my computer and walked away I came back to be greeted by a box asking if I really wanted to end this one process that refused to die. That's what triggered the mass uninstall.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Whilst we're doing anecdotes, my Lenovo X301 running Kubuntu 9.10 is the best laptop ever, period. Even better, when 4GB and 8GB DDR3 SODIMMs become available, I can have 8 or 16GB of RAM in this thing. Running Virtualbox I can sync with my iPod etc and it is like I'm using a native Windows machine.

      Of course, I blew away the default Windows Vista Business install and all the crappy apps that came with it..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )

      Yes, i too remember when having a thinkpad was a status symbol due to their quality. now its a stigma " look at the loser "

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by InsertCleverUsername ( 950130 )

      I got a Thinkpad last Summer and I've been really happy with it. However, it was a rough start --had to remove crapware that crashed Vista frequently. But Lenovo made it easy enough to get a fresh install with no extras. (see this comment: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1282033&cid=28470885 [slashdot.org] ) Since that re-install it's worked flawlessly. Customer service seemed good too. I thought I had a bad DVD burner and they happily sent a replacement (in retrospect I think it was just some bad disks,

  • Two problems, hard to say which more serious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:43PM (#28469901)

    From reading the discussion forums, there are two problems:

    1) System is not obeying checkbox to not show specific message again.

    2) System is presenting ads through software installed by the vendor, not by email or browser.

    At first #1 seems to be the bigger problem, as if you could check a box not to see the message again you'll only be bothered once... until you read the bit about "specific" again. Checking that box by design is supposed to only block that EXACT ad, not others that may come later...

    That was indeed an insane choice to include by a vendor. As noted, these could pop up at the most inconvenient time. Even if you dismiss one and it worked, you never know when you may get another.

    I'm sure they'll get rid of this soon, but it has to go down in history as one of the bigger WTF moments in vendor specific software installs.

  • Obligatory Snark (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:43PM (#28469907) Homepage Journal
    This issue only affects Windows users.

  • Its over (Score:4, Insightful)

    by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:46PM (#28469935) Journal

    Thats it folks, thinkpads are officially dethroned as the king of business laptops.

    • Re:Its over (Score:4, Informative)

      by fafaforza ( 248976 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:04PM (#28470253)

      My T61 will probably be my last. I waited about 2 months for repair to be done on plastic pieces that wouldn't latch close properly. One location was never fixed, even though I clearly labeled it.

      Recently extended my warranty only to look it up the other day and see that it shows as expired.

      My model doesn't show up on their support site when trying to download drivers/software, but does when I enter the serial.

      Plus the aluminum cage made it thicker, heavier, and less elegant. And now that they're in the hands of Lenovo, I wouldn't be expecting any improvements.

      If anything, they'll ruin the line by adding their own touches. When will purple backlighting on buttons make its appearance? The T400s is sporting lights on volume buttons and the caps lock key. The thing must look like a Christmas tree in the dark. And don't get me started on the Esc key that's TWO ROWS HIGH. Walk away, folks.

    • Re:Its over (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:12PM (#28470375)

      They were already on their way out the moment they were purchased by a foreign company with some degree of state control.

      (Yeah, even the "domestic" companies foreign-source most of their parts but at least the system design is domestically controlled.)

      I work for a defense contractor, the moment the Lenovo buyout happened we stopped buying Thinkpads and went to Dell. It was pretty much mandated by the customer. (If I recall correctly, there were a lot of news articles about the government banning further Thinkpad purchases post-Lenovo across the board around that time.)

      Now, Lenovo has effectively done just what the US government feared they might do - try to sneak stuff onto customers' machines for their own gain.

      Who knows what else in addition to this adware is getting slipped to customers?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Foobar_ ( 120869 )

      On the topic of thrones! You'll want to use one of Lenovo's new laptops as a cat box liner.

      Stay away from Lenovo G530, they emit the loudest beep you will ever have the misfortune of hearing EVERY SINGLE TIME you plug in or unplug the AC adapter. The beep comes out the "PC Speaker" output of the onboard sound. You can turn all sound channel volumes down to 0% and mute everything, and the volume of the power beep will only be reduced to ridiculously loud.

      Lenovo forums and phone calls state that this is not a

  • compatibility (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:48PM (#28469981)

    I wonder if it's compatible with the rootkit that Sony so kindly installed for me?

  • Just wait, it'll get even better (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TrentTheThief ( 118302 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @01:49PM (#28470007)

    Just think how wonderful it will be once the red chinese government puts their own stealthy spyware right into the microcode!

    Are you having paranoid thought now?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jolyonr ( 560227 )

      What makes you think they haven't already?

    • Good thing you have a choice where you can buy a laptop (or a desktop) from...

      I guess my Dell was made in Malaysia now that I look at it.

    • I don't think it will happen. It is really hard to write microcode that doesn't conflict with the one from NSA.

  • You do realize that this is just another salvo in the Chinese effort to cripple American business productivity and efficiency, don't you? What little there is left of it, that is?

  • What the hell were they thinking? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:04PM (#28470257) Homepage

    What idiot in marketing (marketing majors have no souls) convinced an even bigger idiot in management that this would be a good idea?

    People LOVE popups, right, everyone knows this, right?

    A stunt like this isn't going to increase sales, it's going to DECREASE them. And, this is yet another example why I DO NOT run any sort of automatic update. I update software/drivers, etc, when I feel a NEED to do so, if it's working, leave it alone. Updates only usually end up in adding more bloat to a system anyway, look at how Acrobat reader is 10 times the size it was a couple years ago yet doesn't do anything significantly different.

  • Change of Plans (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Deton8 ( 522248 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:08PM (#28470319)
    Wow, that's an incredibly stupid thing for Lenovo to do. I was about to order a Lenovo for my next laptop and if it worked out I was going to ask our IT department to change from the current incumbents (Dell and Sony) to Lenovo for our sales and executive staff. I'm going to wait to see that this issue is fully resolved before making a move, and if they don't fix it, they can forget about 20 to 30 laptop orders a year from my company. I don't think my emotion would be unique -- I'm sure 90% of IT managers would disqualify Lenovo if they knew about this spam pop-up problem and didn't have an easy way to disable it enterprise-wide. Billions of dollars are at risk for something that probably only brings them a few hundred K$ per year. Bone-headed.
    • Why would you leave the native stuff there in a corp environment? The first thing we do to any machine is blow out anything on the hard drive and install our own image.
      • There's another comment that says installing the wireless drivers from lenovo installs this adware.

  • What would make it even better... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:17PM (#28470455) Journal

    The only thing that would make this better is if Lenovo sold ad space. Imagine explaining the pr0n popups during your next big presentation. This seems so inevitable that I'm astonished that they haven't already done it.

  • LENOVO!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Icegryphon ( 715550 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:20PM (#28470475)
    What are you doing?! You are ruining BigBlue's legacy.
    You should be the best of the best for business.
    Stop adding all this extra Adware, crap software on new systems
    I am ashamed to be a IBM fan right now.. Ashamed.

  • it got me too (Score:2, Insightful)

    by chasmosis ( 522680 )
    I had this exact thing start happening earlier this week. I googled it and used the instructions to disable the Lenovo Message Center Plus. This is my work Laptop. I openned a ticket and tried to explain to them what it was but no they had to treat my like a newbie and scan my harddrive for malware (like I hadn't already thought of that), I know its SOP but I already told them what it was. The biggest reason for openning a Ticket was so they would know about it when somebody else here (all laptops are l

  • At the time they were all sitting around thinking of how to renew ad ventures, this idea came up...
    At the next presentation, they will be sure NOT to use a Lenovo thinkpad to present the new ads,
    in case the old ads pop up over top of the the new ones! : P

    The genius minds of one culture might be leagues behind the genius minds of another...

  • I have a great idea (Score:3, Informative)

    by Akita24 ( 1080779 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:49PM (#28470863)
    How about all you HARDWARE manufacturers sell me HARDWARE and stay the fuck out of the SOFTWARE business. Unlike Windows which I've only "rented" from Microsoft, I BOUGHT your damned hardware. It's now MINE. When I update a BIOS or install a driver, what I want is a BIOS or a driver, not you shill for some lame-assed POS software. Fuck off already. Assholes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sco08y ( 615665 )

      "How about all you HARDWARE manufacturers sell me HARDWARE and stay the fuck out of the SOFTWARE business."

      Right on! You listening, Apple?!

  • Wait till they install (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JohnnyGTO ( 102952 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @02:57PM (#28471015) Homepage
    Green Dam software. :-)
  • It's not just that the ads pop up every 2 hours, but when they pop up in the middle of an important presentation to your most critical customers that this really bites.

  • Personally Deploying Lenovo Hardware (Score:3, Informative)

    by LoudMusic ( 199347 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @03:34PM (#28471719)

    I personally deploy Lenovo hardware for clients and I do so from a custom made Windows image that I created by first formatting a computer and installing Windows from scratch, then adding necessary drivers. There is NO NEED for any of the Lenovo software.

    The Lenovo brand hardware is actually pretty nice. We roll out T400 ThinkPad systems and so far they seem to be very rugged and perform quite well. You just have to get the Think(disad)Vantage shit off the system first.

  • Maybe we should print up some bumper stickers that say "Don't blame me - I run Linux!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by raph ( 3148 )

      Nonono, what you really want to do is run a system daemon that pops up an X11 window every two hours with that message.

  • lenovo is really just trying to motivate me to stop being lazy and finally uninstall all the software they pre-installed on the laptop I purchased earlier this year. ;)

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