Paul Thurrott and ZDNet Independently Slam Microsofts Newest Surface, Surfacegate Has Begun
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@coliver said:
My wife works for a very large company (largest of its type in the US) They've standardized on Lenovo. Her father works for a different company (again the largest of its type in the US)... they are Dell now but apparently the next cycle there are plans to implement Lenovo laptops and workstations. Just seems crazy to me from the outside looking in.
They are looking to MOVE to Lenovo? WHY? Clearly that CTO doesn't care about security (at best he hasn't heard about the issues they've had - at worst he doesn't care and only cares about what he thinks will save the company a few bucks).
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@coliver said:
Just seems crazy to me from the outside looking in.
I'm sure it seems crazy from the inside too.
Lenovo is smart, though, they know that the American small business just is so clueless that they can do anything they want and the average American isn't going to catch on. I guarantee they are just laughing and laughing about it. It must blow their minds that they get caught over and over and yet... no one cares.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
Just seems crazy to me from the outside looking in.
I'm sure it seems crazy from the inside too.
Lenovo is smart, though, they know that the American small business just is so clueless that they can do anything they want and the average American isn't going to catch on. I guarantee they are just laughing and laughing about it. It must blow their minds that they get caught over and over and yet... no one cares.
It's just odd that these aren't small companies. These are multi-national entities with operations all over the world. Although that doesn't mean they are any more informed then the average SMB.
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@coliver said:
It's just odd that these aren't small companies. These are multi-national entities with operations all over the world. Although that doesn't mean they are any more informed then the average SMB.
I've worked for some pretty small companies like that. Are they corporations with boards and trained management, or just one guy running everything based on emotion?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
It's just odd that these aren't small companies. These are multi-national entities with operations all over the world. Although that doesn't mean they are any more informed then the average SMB.
I've worked for some pretty small companies like that. Are they corporations with boards and trained management, or just one guy running everything based on emotion?
That I don't know. I believe that they are corporations with an actual management structure but I haven't seen that side of it.
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The Surface Pro 3 and 4 have had so many issues in our organization... Problems mostly to do with display issues; though there are a ton of other issues too. With the SP2 and 3, we've seen numerous Wi-Fi issues, despite the machines being fully updated. With the SP3 we've seen the screen flickering issue still happen even with the latest drivers and updates.
But the Surface Pro 4....This machine is truly testing my patience. I am fully up-to-date, I'm running Windows 10 Enterprise, so we're just at build 1511 (10586) and the Cumulative update for 1511 (10586) just came out. I have the latest drivers from Intel, which are unsigned by Microsoft and had to be installed manually.
While docked, the monitors will be turned off when I have to step away to assist someone in the office (or for whatever reason), most of the time when I come back, I hit a key to wake up the computer.....only to find that the SP4 screen comes on and not my 2 U2415s. This has been happening since I first got the machine, to fix it, I simply used to be able to just unplug the mini-dock cable and plug it back in and POOF! Everthing goes back to normal.
I've also had a couple of Blue Screens that have since not happened (updated drivers, removed display driver and reinstalled a few weeks back)
The hot bag issue is definitely still happening....
Where is Microsoft? Is the company that cocky that they won't lose people that they just sit on their hands? Or are they truly working on these issues alongside "...3rd party companies..." like they say... (Don't have the source, sorry hah)
I've been testing the SP4 before we roll them out to people in the field and to shareholders...we've given three out, so far so good, but I'm still a bit nervous about a full on deployment, especially if they have to dock. -
As far as Lenovo, that secret chip or whatever it was they sneaked into machines should have bankrupted them.... Though the reality is, it obviously hasn't done much. Am I missing something though, has Lenovo done anything more than the first incident I'm aware of?
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@kamidon said:
As far as Lenovo, that secret chip or whatever it was they sneaked into machines should have bankrupted them.... Though the reality is, it obviously hasn't done much. Am I missing something though, has Lenovo done anything more than the first incident I'm aware of?
They're having at least 1 security flaw per month released. The latest one was "We changed a hardcoded password, so that's not a problem any more." Only everyone figured out what the new password was right away.
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@travisdh1 Oh wow, hahaha
That's pretty pathetic.... -
@kamidon said:
As far as Lenovo, that secret chip or whatever it was they sneaked into machines should have bankrupted them.... Though the reality is, it obviously hasn't done much. Am I missing something though, has Lenovo done anything more than the first incident I'm aware of?
They are up to like four or five epic security failures. They have been huge, each one. The secret chip wasn't even the worst one!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@kamidon said:
As far as Lenovo, that secret chip or whatever it was they sneaked into machines should have bankrupted them.... Though the reality is, it obviously hasn't done much. Am I missing something though, has Lenovo done anything more than the first incident I'm aware of?
They are up to like four or five epic security failures. They have been huge, each one. The secret chip wasn't even the worst one!
What was the security chip? I missed that announcement.
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@kamidon said:
While docked, the monitors will be turned off when I have to step away to assist someone in the office (or for whatever reason), most of the time when I come back, I hit a key to wake up the computer.....only to find that the SP4 screen comes on and not my 2 U2415s. This has been happening since I first got the machine, to fix it, I simply used to be able to just unplug the mini-dock cable and plug it back in and POOF! Everthing goes back to normal.
This is probably related to Sleep mode - try disabling sleep while docked and that problem might go away.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@kamidon said:
As far as Lenovo, that secret chip or whatever it was they sneaked into machines should have bankrupted them.... Though the reality is, it obviously hasn't done much. Am I missing something though, has Lenovo done anything more than the first incident I'm aware of?
They are up to like four or five epic security failures. They have been huge, each one. The secret chip wasn't even the worst one!
What was the security chip? I missed that announcement.
Not the actual security chip. I believe everyone means the BIOS chip that bypassed security even after a clean rebuild.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@kamidon said:
As far as Lenovo, that secret chip or whatever it was they sneaked into machines should have bankrupted them.... Though the reality is, it obviously hasn't done much. Am I missing something though, has Lenovo done anything more than the first incident I'm aware of?
They are up to like four or five epic security failures. They have been huge, each one. The secret chip wasn't even the worst one!
What was the security chip? I missed that announcement.
Not the actual security chip. I believe everyone means the BIOS chip that bypassed security even after a clean rebuild.
Aww.. the auto reinstall of Lenovo junkware after clean install.. OK.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@kamidon said:
As far as Lenovo, that secret chip or whatever it was they sneaked into machines should have bankrupted them.... Though the reality is, it obviously hasn't done much. Am I missing something though, has Lenovo done anything more than the first incident I'm aware of?
They are up to like four or five epic security failures. They have been huge, each one. The secret chip wasn't even the worst one!
What was the security chip? I missed that announcement.
Not the actual security chip. I believe everyone means the BIOS chip that bypassed security even after a clean rebuild.
Aww.. the auto reinstall of Lenovo junkware after clean install.. OK.
Yes, I believe that that is what is being referred to. That was my assumption, anyway.
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Oh oops, I thought something was physically removed from the Lenovo machines. Eh I never even read the news stories, just skimmed. It's disappointing regardless though, I used to like Lenovo a bit less than a decade ago.
I really liked how some of their laptops had keyboards that were easy to remove and plastic (or whatever) underneath them to protect the motherboard in case of a spill. The same particular model I liked had military grade plastic as well and was pretty damn strong. Albeit, this doesn't make for an awesome computer, but I did like how they design some models.
OOOOOHhhhhh just noticed an update for the Surface Pro 4 (and Surface Book) just popped up on Windows update! W00t! Let's all cross our fingers and hope it doesn't break more than is fixed!
(lol) -
Basically you liked the bits that they inherited rather than the bits that they did
Once the IBM engineering got old, there hasn't been anything usable out of Lenovo. Their gear, any designed by them, has been middling at best. -
@scottalanmiller said:
Basically you liked the bits that they inherited rather than the bits that they did
Once the IBM engineering got old, there hasn't been anything usable out of Lenovo. Their gear, any designed by them, has been middling at best.I won't agree with that, unless the Yoga design came from IBM. I really like the Yoga design. I realize it's a personal thing. But the design of the device is nice, solid, and functional. Sadly Lenovo hosted themselves and us with their network shim causing wireless issues up the ying/yang.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Basically you liked the bits that they inherited rather than the bits that they did
Once the IBM engineering got old, there hasn't been anything usable out of Lenovo. Their gear, any designed by them, has been middling at best.I won't agree with that, unless the Yoga design came from IBM. I really like the Yoga design. I realize it's a personal thing. But the design of the device is nice, solid, and functional. Sadly Lenovo hosted themselves and us with their network shim causing wireless issues up the ying/yang.
You like it BUT you have it so broken that you had to replace some of the hardware to get it functional, right? By any normal standard, that's not even a working device
Normally people would deem needing to open their laptop and replace the parts that Lenovo can't fix and won't support as "utter failure." I get that you can still like it, but the bar for which you are willing to accept a device as "good" is dramatically below what I would accept as "passable."Yoga is definitely not something IBM would have been involved with. IBM would never have let that out the door like that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Basically you liked the bits that they inherited rather than the bits that they did
Once the IBM engineering got old, there hasn't been anything usable out of Lenovo. Their gear, any designed by them, has been middling at best.I won't agree with that, unless the Yoga design came from IBM. I really like the Yoga design. I realize it's a personal thing. But the design of the device is nice, solid, and functional. Sadly Lenovo hosted themselves and us with their network shim causing wireless issues up the ying/yang.
You like it BUT you have it so broken that you had to replace some of the hardware to get it functional, right? By any normal standard, that's not even a working device
Normally people would deem needing to open their laptop and replace the parts that Lenovo can't fix and won't support as "utter failure." I get that you can still like it, but the bar for which you are willing to accept a device as "good" is dramatically below what I would accept as "passable."Yoga is definitely not something IBM would have been involved with. IBM would never have let that out the door like that.
I'm only talking about the chassis, nothing more - not the motherboard/the wifi/the display (though the display is nice - personally I'm not a fan of ultra high res anymore when a system isn't designed specifically around it, i.e. iPad)
So yes liked the chassis - the rest - nope Lenovo deserves to burn in hell for what I and your wife had to do to work around those issues.
