New Laptop needed
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Wish I could offer a suggestion. The only thing I have in my house now are 2 plus year old Lenovo laptops. After resolving the other problems, I really enjoy both of these laptops.
The price point will make buying anything business class extremely difficult if not impossible unless you go for used.
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Go find the surface pro replacement thread. I recommended a dell 2 in 1 there. It is a solid laptop.
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Still like the Lenovo Yogas. Pretty good hardware.
Yeah, I know, bloatware and spyware. Never ever use a preinstalled operating systems
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I like the HP Elitebooks. To get in your budget, you'd have to find a used one, but I've had pretty good luck with them. My travel laptop is a HP Elitebook Folio 9470m. I don't like the small screen, but I like everything else. Light weight, SSD, 8GB RAM, i5, thinner than a dime. You can also dock it and run dual monitors, etc. Some of the newer models let you run dual monitors and the laptop screen for a total of 3 screens.
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@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
Still like the Lenovo Yogas. Pretty good hardware.
Yeah, I know, bloatware and spyware. Never ever use a preinstalled operating systems
It was worse than just bloatware and spyware - Lenovo actually keyed the hardware in the case of the Wireless NIC to not work with non Lenovo drivers - i.e. the ones that included the spyware, AND
they included a BIOS add-on that auto-installed Lenovo's own updater software.While I have less of an issue with the second issue (mainly because the newer systems were designed to do this and Lenovo just took advantage of it), the first issue makes them completely untrustworthy.
I love the hardware I have from them from 2+ years ago too - having no other light weight laptop experience since then (I'm buying Probooks for my office and they are anything but ultrabooks), so I have no idea what is good out there.
I guess I'll end this by saying, don't buy a consumer model. Buy a Probook or Elitebook from HP, or whatever Dell's business class is. I think Toshiba still has a business class line - as for the rest (Acer, Asus, etc) I have no clue if they have a business class line.
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@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
Yeah, I know, bloatware and spyware. Never ever use a preinstalled operating systems
Makes no difference. People keep repeating his to cover up that it is NOT the software that is stealing your data in Lenovo devices. That's why it is a special case that we give zero allowances for using - because reinstalling the OS does not protect you.
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Didn't know yet. So it's built into the hardware?
Any sources at hand?
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...is this just related to consumer devices or also to ThinkPads?
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I have a Samsung Ultra that's pretty decent, but it's a few years old and I'm constantly in fear it will explode on me at any minute.
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@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
...is this just related to consumer devices or also to ThinkPads?
As far as I know it was only the consumer brands.
I can't quickly find a link talking about the driver locking - but Scott and I both have first hand experience with it. and I read tons of forum threads about the problem when I was having my problem. -
@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
Didn't know yet. So it's built into the hardware?
Any sources at hand?
https://darait.co.uk/2015/08/lenovo-another-security-hole-found/
If even I'm publishing about it..it's bad
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@Dashrender said in New Laptop needed:
@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
...is this just related to consumer devices or also to ThinkPads?
As far as I know it was only the consumer brands.
I can't quickly find a link talking about the driver locking - but Scott and I both have first hand experience with it. and I read tons of forum threads about the problem when I was having my problem.They reclassified at least 3 lines of equipment the week before they announced Superfish. So, yeah, technically all "business" class equipment were fine, so long as you didn't have something that got reclassified.
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@Dashrender said in New Laptop needed:
@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
...is this just related to consumer devices or also to ThinkPads?
As far as I know it was only the consumer brands.
I can't quickly find a link talking about the driver locking - but Scott and I both have first hand experience with it. and I read tons of forum threads about the problem when I was having my problem.We really shouldn't forget the BIOS level remote support tool, that used the same password for every single Lenovo. The "fix"? Change the password. I haven't seen any research into weather it's still a single password for every machine since.
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Ok, thanks guys. I thought this was about SuperFish, but it seems to be about abusing UEFI and MS anti-theft to keep an installer around. Pretty bad that UEFI got plenty of space...
Don't want to hijack this thread, but this is really a big problem for us. We got huge discounts on Lenovo equipment in the past, but I can't be sure anymore if the next version of ThinkPads or Business Yogas will have this "feature" too.
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@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
Ok, thanks guys. I thought this was about SuperFish, but it seems to be about abusing UEFI and MS anti-theft to keep an installer around. Pretty bad that UEFI got plenty of space...
Don't want to hijack this thread, but this is really a big problem for us. We got huge discounts on Lenovo equipment in the past, but I can't be sure anymore if the next version of ThinkPads or Business Yogas will have this "feature" too.
I don't recall any specific articles about Lenovo and superfish specifically about keying the hardware. Scott and myself found this through personal experience. Lenovo did release replacement NIC drivers that didn't have Superfish inside it.
Lenovo's lying about it then only after being crucified in the media actually changing it - this makes them untrustworthy basically forever more.
I suppose the only way they can dig themselves out of this whole is if the company is whole bought out by someone new, and the entire top several tiers of management are fired.
Then after that scandal, they have two more scandals in less than a year. Again, I personally mostly give them a pass on the UEFI thing because it was a 'feature' of UEFI and MS OSs.
But what's completely unforgivable is the targeting of consumers and the avoidance of businesses. It was clear from the models that got this crap vs those that didn't that there was thought and malice behind these decisions against the privacy of Lenovo's consumer customers. -
@Dashrender said in New Laptop needed:
Lenovo's lying about it then only after being crucified in the media actually changing it - this makes them untrustworthy basically forever more.
No matter what class of Lenovo machine you buy. I simply won't buy anything from them, nor will my wife or child, or anybody that listens to what I say.
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@thwr said in New Laptop needed:
Ok, thanks guys. I thought this was about SuperFish, but it seems to be about abusing UEFI and MS anti-theft to keep an installer around. Pretty bad that UEFI got plenty of space...
Don't want to hijack this thread, but this is really a big problem for us. We got huge discounts on Lenovo equipment in the past, but I can't be sure anymore if the next version of ThinkPads or Business Yogas will have this "feature" too.
It's about who Lenovo is st their core. Your enemy. Not a normal company with bloat ware.
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Considering these Dell options:
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To which I am leaning toward the New Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1
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@gjacobse said in New Laptop needed:
To which I am leaning toward the New Inspiron 13 5000 2-in-1
All of them look decent, just please, swap that rust out for an SSD
