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You forgot the ridiculous price tag for a refurb X200. My stacked X201 8Gb of RAM, 256Gb Samsung 840 pro, new 9-cell, ultrabase with DVDRW, keyboard, mouse, 22" TFT cost about the price of their bottom end model in total (via ebay)

I assume it hasn't got a hard disk in it as well as they are technically standalone computers with closed source firmware as well these days.

Freedom is expensive.

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> Freedom is expensive.

I'm willing to pay that price for owning something that I know cannot spy on me, does not have remote kill switches I can't control, and is completely serviceable from bottom to top by any third party.

It really is sad that these requirements are now expensive. They used to be taken for granted.

But if there's one thing we learnt the last few years, it's that we were never able to take those things for granted in the first place. You were never free of threat of spyware or kill switches. If anything, we have gotten much better at security than ever before.

Security from whom? Malware has always been fairly easy to avoid as a consumer. Built-in backdoors? What do you do about that?

Intel ME is relatively new, but it is also probably worth noting that it does not phone home until software asks it to be activated.

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