back to article Give us a week to gut Superfish, begs Lenovo CTO

Lenovo's chief technology officer Peter Hortensius has issued another statement on how the company plans to handle Superfish. The missive explains that Lenovo has worked with anti-virus vendors to get their products flattening Superfish whenever a PC starts up and issued a removal tool. Hortensius says Lenovo is now “in the …

  1. mhoulden
    Terminator

    Wouldn't it be nice if one of the actions taken was dismissing whoever was responsible for signing the contract with Superfish in the first place? I know selling aggregated data to advertisers is one of the main ways some companies make money, but Lenovo should really have found out how they were gathering it.

  2. Phil Kingston

    I kinda wish they'll be the first to market with a "no bloatware preinstalled!" marketing campaign. They'd shift a load more kit to the consumers who spend their time calling in the likes of me to get rid of it when it starts bugging them.

    But then again, it's easy money for me. And I suspect the economics at their end mean we'll continue to see all those lovely helpful utilities rolling out the door.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      +1 pint

      I've spent longer myself uninstalling dross that comes with consumer boxes (and yes, that includes Lenovo machines) than it takes to do a fresh OS install. In some cases, I don't even bother getting the nit comb out since it's quicker to shave it all off, so to speak.

      Fortunately, I'd put Ubuntu or clean W7 on the Lenovo machines I last worked on, but this may be moot / outside the Superfish epoch since this was a couple or three years ago.

      Still, I wholeheartedly agree - a 'vanilla' option at the till would be very attractive indeed and one I would likely find myself recommending.

  3. MrDamage Silver badge

    Exploring a wide range of options..

    That include "working directly with users, privacy/security experts and others to create the right preload strategy quickly"

    Operating system, fully patched. Latest device drivers. Nothing else.

    Its then up to the owner to put what THEY want on the PC.

    1. John Tserkezis

      Re: Exploring a wide range of options..

      "Operating system, fully patched. Latest device drivers. Nothing else."

      What? With no strings attached?

      "Hortensius also makes the point that Superfish was only installed on kit aimed at consumers"

      If you're a "consumer" there will always be strings attached. The only way around it, is to kill everything on the drive and start from scratch - it's the only guaranteed way to ensure "nothing else".

      1. Robert Helpmann??
        Childcatcher

        Re: Exploring a wide range of options..

        Hortensius also makes the point that Superfish was only installed on kit aimed at consumers

        So what is installed on business machines instead of Superfish?

        The only way around it, is to kill everything on the drive and start from scratch

        And then along came the NSA.

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Exploring a wide range of options..

      In which case the buyer should pay what the device is worth. That is where the problem stems from, most people won't pay a "reasonable" price for a PC, so the manufacturers cut the margins to the limit, sometimes selling at a loss, then making up the difference with crapware.

      I would happily pay a bit more for a clean device (I wish that we could buy Microsoft Signature PCs over here), but I suspect that most people would rather save a couple of quid and put up with the crapware, until something like this happens...

      1. GregC

        Re: the buyer should pay what the device is worth.

        And there, in a nutshell, it is.

        In the past year I've seen both sides of this. Looking for a "serious" machine, I found the right laptop, at a sensible price, with no crap on it. This involved a bit of research, time and consideration but I ended up with exactly what I wanted.

        On the flipside, about a month ago I needed to replace an ageing netbook. I spent an afternoon wandering around various shops until I ended up with a cheap-as-chips Lenovo, complete with bucketloads of shite preinstalled, including Superfish.

        You get what you pay for.

        I'm in now way offering excuses for what Lenovo did, by the way, but all the time the consumer market continues to buy the cheapest, lowest common denominator, crapware infested stuff it isn't going to stop.

    3. nijam Silver badge

      Re: Exploring a wide range of options..

      > "... Superfish was only installed on kit aimed at consumers"

      meaning

      "Superfish was only installed for customers who were unlikely to be able to defend themselves."

    4. shaolin cookie

      Re: Exploring a wide range of options..

      Yeah, but give the owner also a choice to have *none* of the bloat, ie. no OS either. Still hate paying for Windows whenever I buy a new computer when the first thing I do is to delete it.

      1. big_D Silver badge

        Re: Exploring a wide range of options..

        @shaolin cookie there are plenty of PCs and laptops around (at least here in Germany), which come with just FreeDOS installed.

  4. Mark 85

    Err...WTF?

    COMMENT: All of the above is not far off textbook crisis communications techniques: Lenovo's owned the problem, expressed contrition for the indefensible and is now trying to make itself the best source of information on the wider issue of “ the kind of vulnerabilities that were exposed in the last week”.

    It might be now but for a few days, they were playing denial, then "it's not bad"..... Only when the heat cranked up did they do what should have been done... Yeah... textbook PR only after trying the "blow-off" didn't work. A little late, IMO. Lenovo = I don't think so.

  5. big_D Silver badge

    So...

    Who will they send in?

    Godzilla or Giant Octopus?

    1. Mark 85

      Re: So...

      Mothra!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  6. Crisp
    Mushroom

    Too little too late.

    If Lenovo wanted our trust, a good way to keep it would be not to install privacy busting malware on the laptops it manufactures.

    I don't think anyone is going to accept a "cleaner PC image" what I believe people want is a clean PC image.

  7. Winkypop Silver badge
    Devil

    Too late

    She cried!

  8. CaptainBanjax

    I still dont get it.

    Why do they need to add advertising revenue to the pot? They already overcharge for most of their kit.

    I recently took at look at the Carbon X1, the price is massive vs similar kit from other vendors.

    Take for example the UX303LA-R4338H from Asus. It's under £700, the Lenovo alternative is nearly double the price.

    For comparison:

    Lenovo (reduced from £2000!):

    http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Lenovo_New_X1_Carbon_Touch_Intel_Core_i7-4600U__8GB_256GB_SSD__Intel_HD_Gra_20A7005RUK/version.asp

    Asus:

    http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/Asus_ZenBook_UX303LA_Core_i7_6GB_128GB_SSD_13.3_inch_Full_HD_Windows_8.1_Ul_UX303LA-R4338H/version.asp

    Whilst downvoting me, please understand, I know these laptops aren't identical and a better comparison would be this:

    http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon/

    I'm aware that it has a higher resolution screen...blah blah...military toughness...blah blah...but still, its outlandishly expensive! Even if they do chuck in the malware for free.

    Especially when you look at the tear downs. The ASUS has a spare mSATA slot, you can upgrade the RAM, the SSD and you can easily replace the battery.

    I dunno, I just don't understand laptop pricing anymore.

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: I still dont get it.

      "I'm aware that it has a higher resolution screen...blah blah...military toughness...blah blah...but still, its outlandishly expensive!"

      I'm sorry but your post is full of FAIL.

      You compare two mightily different laptops together and wonder why the higher-spec business model costs more than the consumer model. That Lenovo model you linked to is not even the current model.

      Do you really not understand that for some people price is not the first or only factor when buying something? Why would you spend £700 on an ASUS when you can get an authentic Asus EeeBook X205TA for £175?

      Are you driving a Lada? I hear it looks seats as many as the Jags and Mercs and has four wheels as well.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: I still dont get it.

        Yeah, I gotta say you're full of shit. Lenovo basically has the lowest prices amongst the various tin shifters for everything. When you really get to comparing like for like, Lenovo have dropped the margins to damned near nothing...and they paid for it.

  9. Trigonoceps occipitalis

    A ROLE FOR MS?

    Is there some sort of morality clause in MS licenses, can they pull the plug on Lenovo Windows PCs? Should they?

    It would certainly make all manufacturers think about root kits, bloat ware and advising us about all the useful thing we are totally incapable of finding for ourselves.

  10. cookieMonster Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Another one to add to the Do Not Buy From list

    Sony

    Samsung

    Lenovo

    And while there are probably a few more that could be added to this, there's still plenty to choose from....

  11. Pez92

    re: Another one to add to the Do Not Buy From list

    I still find Lenovo to be the only company that makes laptops for under $1000 that are actually built to last and perform. Their bloatware is awful, like all bloatware, but I buy computers for the hardware, not the software.

    My most recent computer purchase was a lenovo laptop, from best buy no less, so needless to say it was loaded up with bloatware, upwards of 20 icons on the desktop. The very first thing I did was plop in a windows 8.1 installer USB I downloaded painlessly from Microsoft, and due to the integrated product key and SSD install speed, I had a fresh install in 10 minutes. It's easier and faster than ever to do, and eliminates the bloatware issue.

    Though I'd rather not have to do that, the only companies that make workstation laptops of comparable build/keyboard quality are Dell and Apple, both of which charge twice as much for the same hardware. I'd love to boycott every computer company that I disagree with, but then I'd have no one left to buy from. Such is life.

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