They might be misguided. Until there's an official announcement one way or another, I wouldn't pay too much attention to some random Lenovo customer service guy.

Right, but there isn't going to be an official announcement, unless a hundred thousand people jump to premature conclusions and bring out their pitchforks. I agree that it's not terribly smart to draw a conclusion at this point in time, but it's potentially more malicious, if we don't.

Regardless of whether such an agreement exists, and regardless of whether it's a secret if it does exist, I still have my pitchfork out. Lenovo had already lost my good will for their various other shenanigans over the last couple of years, but locking down the machine in a way that makes it impossible to install an alternative OS has decisively lost them my business.

Because he has no clue? He is a tech support person ("product expert") answering forums questions.

Because some support people don't have a clue what they're talking about?