Lenovo doesn't care that your individual security minded person had an issue with it, Lenovo cares that their volume purchasers continue to purchase in volume. They weren't impacted and they don't care.

There are basically no long term downsides to Lenovo for doing what they did.

And you know that how? News articles in the normal media titled "Lenovo spreading Spyware" reach exactly those normal customers, and it is quite possible that this has an effect. And further, those users interested in the stuff are the ones recommending laptops to others.

We simply don't know the effect because we know no sale figures, or do we?

It's a relevant question whether enough people care. The Sony rootkit scandal was (almost) as bad as this, yet it didn't make a dent in their computer sales and the Playstation sold better than ever.

As someone who hasn't bought a Sony labelled product since the rootkit scandal, not sure how much I agree... they definitely would have gotten far more from me when I've bought a couple large TVs, and two stereo systems since then... I even held out on a Bluray player for a long time (I didn't buy sony labelled at least).

Though it's akin to avoiding Bank America Corp in practice, they have their hands in every pot.

Any yet their e-reader business failed. And they don't seem to have done so well on mp3 players (they were big money for other companies a few years ago). Their phone sales are weak compared to other companies with a similar product.

The thing these companies miss is that non-tech people ask their tech friends/family before purchasing new things... So piss off a few 100,000 of the techy people and that can translate over the next few years to millions of lost sales.