For what it's worth, the Superfish and LSE BIOS scandals didn't apply to ThinkPads. I think Lenovo understands that they have too many serious business and gov clients using ThinkPads to risk doing something silly like that to their professional-grade ThinkPad brand.

> For what it's worth

Not much in my book. The problem isn't Superfish, the problem is leadership that allowed it.

ThinkPad is under rather different leadership from Lenovo's consumer division that had the Superfish debacle on IdeaPads and the like. Sure, they are part of one corporation at the very top, but you don't have to go very far down the org chart before they split into separate teams and leadership.

ThinkPad is from the old IBM teams in Raleigh and Yamato. Lenovo made their own laptops before buying IBM's personal computer division, and that line (and its management) became IdeaPad.

If you're troubled by leadership that would allow Superfish (as I am), buy a ThinkPad, not an IdeaPad.

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20240533

I shouldn't have to learn about the internal structure of a company in order to buy a laptop without malware.

Maybe Lenovo should have thought about their internal structure and their brand reputation before installing malware on their laptops, or maybe not (because they don't care about clients like me, they care about the 90% of bosses that buy bulks of Thinkpads and don't know what firmware is). But anyway, it wasn't a rogue engineer who did it, it was Lenovo, and in my eyes: Lenovo ships malware.

Of course it's up to you to decide what computer to buy or not to buy, based on whatever criteria you see fit.

But I don't think you're doing yourself a favor by ruling out ThinkPads just because of a boneheaded decision that Lenovo's consumer division made a few years ago. ThinkPad and IdeaPad really are two separate organizations under one corporate umbrella.

Superfish was not something handed down from on high, it was the bright idea of the consumer group. The ThinkPad team would never go along with something like that; it's not in their DNA and it would destroy their business. Their bread and butter isn't you and me, it's large organizations with IT and security departments who deploy hundreds of ThinkPads at a time and look very closely at the software on them.

Only offering food for thought, it's cool with me whether you buy ThinkPads or something else. :-)

Personally, I agree with the op. If we want to send a message that malware in our BIOSs is absolutely unacceptable, it makes zero sense to give Lenovo any business.

I don't see how boycotting ThinkPads sends a message that BIOS malware is unacceptable. ThinkPads never had that, and never would.

Anyway, I don't usually buy or not buy a computer to send a message. I buy one because it meets my business and personal needs. I've been using ThinkPads for over 20 years, and they have served me very well.

You may choose differently, and of course that's fine.

> I don't see how boycotting ThinkPads sends a message that BIOS malware is unacceptable

It sends a message to other manufacturers: add malware at your own peril. I frankly consider it unethical to buy or recommend products from companies, like Lenovo, who demonstrated anti-consumer behavior because it perpetuates bad behavior as companies think consumers will forget or forgive them.

> ThinkPads never had that, and never would.

That is speculative. I can't know that whatever harmful and irrational environment that led to Superfish in IdeaPad won't affect ThinkPads in the future. Even in the most generous understanding where IdeaPad is a different, physically separate branch of the company, and Superfish was an act of incompetence and not outright malice I can't be expected to keep up with the insider intrigue of the company to notice any changes that could negatively affect me. More importantly, leadership is still responsible for setting irrational environment that lead to Superfish, whatever that environment was. This is a multi-billion dollar company, there is no excuse for such incompetence.

> I think Lenovo understands that they have too many serious business and gov clients using ThinkPads to risk doing something silly like that to their professional-grade ThinkPad brand.

I think that they rely on their A team to develop the malware targetting business and government clients, rather than the C team responsible for Superfish.

I wish laptop manufacturers stopped carrying about ugly and spent more time on functionality such as ethernet port and easy to upgrade and repair, sell it to me without memory (or memory at a normal price), etc...

I don't buy laptops to look good.

> sell it to me without memory (or memory at a normal price), etc...

That's the catch isn't it? Manufacturers have a lot of markup on things like RAM and SSD that they'd rather force you to upgrade on their websites than sell without memory.

Anecdata: I was trying to buy a couple of Dell Laptops for our office and the Dell US website has a customize option. Base model had 4 GB RAM and the upgrade to 8 GB RAM was .. drum roll .. approx $67 [1] . Comparable one on Amazon? $37-ish [2]. You will have a lot of fun doing similar comparison with SSDs.

[1]https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-laptops-and-notebo...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-PC4-19200-2400MHz-SODIMM-M471...

Those two are not mutually exclusive, unless you buy the premise that thinner = better (I don't).

A thick laptop with many ports can look just as good as a thin one.

> Those two are not mutually exclusive, unless you buy the premise that thinner = better (I don't).

Even if you do, they're still not necessarily exclusive: ifixit tore down a bunch of HP devices, and even the "Elite X2 G4" two-in-one — not exactly a beastly looking device https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Elite-x2-G4-detachable-will... — got 9/10 on repairability: https://www.ifixit.com/News/hp-makes-the-modern-repairable-d...

I have been fairly impressed by Del hardware. Unfortunately, you can no longer get a tracking on their 13 inches (and they never had 3 button).

I agree with thinner ≠ better.

So where is the thinner obsession coming from? Why are they removing all the ports?

Isn't it because of fashion?

Functionality and esthetics do not have to be mutually exclusive, but the people designing laptops don't seem to be aware of that.

It could be because they are gutless unimaginative trend-following sheeps.

It could also be because they just try to sell whatever it is they think most of their customers believe they want / need (wether or not said customers are right is a whole other matter)

Ugly like a Thinkpad is normally, or ugly even for a Thinkpad?

Because I would normally put the Thinkpad in a "a design only an engineer could love" category.

I love it (OK I am an `"engineer"' aka slinger of JS). The keyboard of the X230 and form factor was damn good. I loved using it until I stupidly cracked the screen.

It's very easy to replace the screen unlike Apple.

What do you think of the X series?

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/c/t...

The primary design element is that they are black, other than that they are sort of generic (and hey, a black computer is pretty generic).

One of the main advantages of Thinkpad is Coreboot/Libreboot support to free yourself from Lenovo BIOS - and even neuter Intel ME. Aesthetics are a personal matter, but ergonomically I also prefer Thinkpad over MacBooks.

That point would be great if both those things worked to their full potential on a model made after circa ~2012

Yeah, to be clear, OpenBSD seemed to have the best support for this particular laptop.

If it had been another laptop, I'm not sure I would have done OpenBSD. I would have done the same testing with Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD and chose the best one for me from that testing.

I don't find the laptop ugly, but then again I don't truly have an opinion of how it looks. I got it to replace my old laptop, and since I couldn't decide what more expensive laptop to get yet, I'm working with this one for now. I wasn't expecting it to be performant and acceptable to me for $200, you know.

> - They're ugly. I find most current laptops ugly, so this may be my fault, and by itself it wouldn't be enough of a reason not to buy one. But still.

Perhaps, but they're prettier than any of the others.

I find the Lenovo laptops beautiful in a sort of old school way...

I agree and I will add another reason... I had an original IBM thinkpad and I loved it. Even the red nipple thing on the keyboard. I bought a cheaper one from lenovo labelled 'thinkpad' and it was disgustingly cheap. The keyboard felt cheap, the trackpad was unusable. You want to make a cheap laptop, fine, but don't tarnish the 'thinkpad' brand.

I've never looked back.

Do you happen to recall the model name of that disgustingly cheap ThinkPad? (Examples are T480, E520, etc.) Especially the first letter - that tells what series it is. There are some like the E and L series that are not regarded as being the same quality as others like the T and X series.

I think it was an E or an L. Avoid it like the plague, I can still feel that trackpad in my mind.

Yeah, most ThinkPad fanatics like me will agree with you on that. The current business models are the P, T, and X series, much higher quality machines.

Can I ask... How do you feel about Lenovo as a company? Do you trust their firmware? I preferred IBM, as much as a hopeless company as they are, it felt like a good old tech company.

I personally don't. A lot of the same crowd that uses ancient Thinkpads uses Coreboot or Libreboot. I used an x220 for 3 years before buying an x230 last month, and I flashed Coreboot (plus me_cleaner) on both of them.

also - they no longer use T40 style keyboards, which are the best.

The chiclet keyboard on my T470 is still pretty great, though.

Hardly anyone minds the typing feel of the current or recent generation ThinkPad keyboards. What many of us lament is the loss of the classic 7-row keyboard layout like the T420 had. But that ship sank years ago.

I've made my peace with the new layout, but I do miss the old one.

I do like the keyboard on this T420, it is a pleasure.

I’m not at my computer to find a link, but I think dell and hp had similar, but less severe, scandals. Windows-based laptops are a wasteland, I’m not sure who to buy my next machine from (I run Ubuntu)

System76 is pricey but the hardware is handpicked for linux and their support is excellent. Also I believe they are currently in the process of transitioning to opensource firmware

Yup, they're working on coreboot support. If you're in Europe Tuxedo Linux is also working on coreboot, and the Purism laptops ship with it out of the box.

Ugly as opposed as opposed to what exactly? A toughbook is ugly. Those hp envys are ugly.

> Those hp envys are ugly.

Wholeheartedly agree (but for different reasons than the Thinkpad)

I think the Dell Latitude 7490 competes in the same aesthetic category of the Thinkpad and does a much better job at it. It looks clean and consistent with its own design. I'm not a designer, so I can't pinpoint exactly why, but it feels much cleaner. Thinkpads look cluttered to me.

As it sits on my desk, I can't help the feel the new hp logo is flipping me off.

BIOS?

"The engine, which resides in the computer's BIOS, replaces a core Windows system file with its own, allowing files to be downloaded once the device is connected to the internet."

https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-sof...