It's the same problem with Android currently which is that when every manufacturer is using the same OS they have to find a way to differentiate. In Android this means custom skins, custom apps, and the like. On Windows this means "free" antivirus, custom apps, and the like. It would be nice if they all just completed on hardware but then it's really a race to the bottom.

Do consumers actually differentiate on these extras? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "Yeah I picked up a Lenovo laptop because the antivirus they package is better than Dell's" or "I got a Samsung phone because their skins are better than HTC's" I'd love to see the market research that backs that idea up...

I thought the real reason manufacturers do this is because they're in a very low margin industry. For computers they get some deal with software companies to pre-install their product, and similar for cell phones with service providers.

I'm not sure if the "free" antivirus counts as "differentiating", since it's almost always - without fail - either McAfee or Norton.

With that said, differentiating by custom UIs on top of the base platform (i.e. the Android approach) would be much better, and would be actually-useful differentiation rather than a matter of "well which company's going to fuck me over the least with their preinstalled shitware?".

I personally dislike custom UI's shipped by the phone manufacturer because more often than not it leads to delays in OS updates due to them needing to adapt their UI to core changes. Customization (by manufacturers) can come at a very high price for the end user in terms of security and upgradability.

Right, but that's leaps and bounds better than "free" McAfee, no matter which way you skin it.

This also isn't exactly universally true. HTC was pretty responsive in getting Lollipop out to my One M8, for example, even with its whole "Sense UI" shebang.

Not to mention I find 90% of those custom UIs look horrible and cluttered compared to Google's original design.

Their perspective is that they're adding value through software (i.e. without spending more money on hardware). Not that I agree with this line of reasoning...

Are you certain of this perspective or is this your best guess? I see people say this type of thing all the time, and I don't see any official statements corroborating them.

I picked it up from here: http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/global/home/what-we-think/rep...

It's still only one sort of business strategy. Not every hardware company is necessarily pursuing this line.

> opening the box was unscrew the case and change the drive for an SSD

Does that not void the warranty?

This might depend on country, but in most countries that have some consumer protection, replacing a hard disk and similar reasonable operations are considered to be normal use of the machine, and the consumer law says that the consumer may not be prevented from doing this.

When the customer is not a consumer but a company, then things might be different (companies may be able to give away their rights in a way that consumers may not).

In EU countries, a manufacturer may offer a warranty, but this is just supposed to be an extra service; the seller is at least required to provide defect liability (i.e. a device must fixed if broken when it is sold and it must last for a reasonable time in reasonable use).

This was helpful, thanks for the reply.

I have a T440p laptop which opens up very nicely and cleanly for user hard drive replacement. 2 screws and the whole back cover pops off, no "warranty void" stickers or any of that. I also upgraded the WiFi module to one that supports 5 GHz, and upgraded the RAM to 16GB, all without any fuss from the chassis. It was significantly cheaper to order the barebones system and do these upgrades myself than to order a more advanced system pre-assembled from Lenovo.

So I don't think changing a hard drive would void it. But also, I don't usually care about warranties. Things usually break only after the warranty expires, and for any electronic device, as long as it's a common enough model number it's usually possible to get spare parts on eBay when the time comes.

Depends on the laptop. Often 'Lenovo' translates to 'ThinkPad', where nearly every component is meant to be accessible and easy to switch out.

Kinda offtopic, but this is a bit misleading. The T4x0s series, for instance, makes it very difficult to access anything -- and the T series is known as one of the good ones!

Also, Thinkpads all have a BIOS whitelist that prevents you from actually using the hardware you just easily installed.

Wow, wouldn't have guessed. Haven't played with a T4x0s. I have a T4x0p (T440p) and it's extremely easy to access everything. But I just looked at some Youtube videos and the 's' is indeed a world of difference from the 'p'.

I've yet to encounter a manufacturer that considered a hard drive swap to be warranty-voiding. Capacity upgrades are generally perceived to be routine enough to be considered normal use; making it warranty-voiding would be like making the installation/removal of USB devices warranty-voiding.

ThinkPads encourage end-user repairs/modifications.

For example, If your HDD fails under warranty, they'll ship you a new one with the simple instructions to replace it. Only tool needed is a small Philips screwdriver. :-)

Not if its a decent warranty. Its ok to replace HD and RAM on a 2010 MacBook pro.

How did you afford a 6-year long mac warranty?