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Comment by lessthunk | Hacker News Reader

.. reinstall any computer you get from scratch; Firmware Bios spying is of course much harder to get rid from.

Many of these computers don't even come with OS reinstallation media. They tend to have recovery partitions on the hard drives which will only restore the computer to its initial spyware-ridden state.

I downvoted your comment because of your implication that spyware wouldn't be a problem if only everyone were as sophisticated as you.

You're setting a good standard for downvote etiquette. It's kind to not leave people guessing and I think it strengthens our community.

I don't think the comment implies any such thing. Suggesting mitigations for the current state of things doesn't in any way imply acceptance of the current state. At most, it implies resignation.

You can just reacquire the installation media from elsewhere and reuse the serial key.

Generally not. Unless Microsoft has changed their policy, you cannot use an OEM key to install a retail copy of Windows.

I was reading HN on mobile but decided to pull my laptop over and upvote you (then comment; can't comment on mobile app) not because I agree with you or agree/disagree with parent comment but because you were highly civilized with your comment and your downvote.

You made a counterpoint, you didn't insult (the use of the word 'nonsense' is really common on HN counterpoints), you downvoted, then you explained your reason for the downvote. In all this now flame-wars were set.

I hope a lot of us will follow your path and make HN pleasant for everyone.

Thank you.

as much as this is a good idea, remember that most people who buy a laptop just want to take it home and have it work. Add to that point that reinstalling from scratch typically involves finding all the drivers all over again and spending hours running through all the windows updates. This is something that most people DO NOT want to go through or have the knowledge to do so.

Are drivers really such a problem still with windows? The past few laptops I've reinstalled worked out of the box with a fresh install. If not, it automatically got the drivers from windows update.

You can only get windows updates if your network drivers work. With the Lenovos, Dells, and HPs I've been coming across early, Windows 7 and 8 are broken out of the box, usually with no network drivers.

Strangely enough, Linux often works flawlessly with these same computers.

I've never not seen wired networking work. It's been at least five years since I've handled a laptop where wireless did not work out of the box.

With my Lenovo Thinkpad t450s, neither wired nor wireless networking work when you reinstall Windows 8.1 on your own.

Wow, that is genuinely surprising. Good to know.

At this point I wouldn't put BIOS/NIC spying past Lenovo. They've sternly defended their bad decision and continue to pre-install Superfish.

I used to think RMS was paranoid with his fully open source stack, Lenovo has me questioning that belief.

No more than any other vendor. They apologized about Superfish, not that it matters because such apologies are free. Superfish was pretty stupid, but I wouldn't use the preinstalled OS on any laptop anyway just for reasons like this which are NOT specific to Lenovo

Upvoted since reinstalling is a valuable skill to learn and cultivate.

You know, my father used to love motorbikes when he was young. Since he lived in a communist state(Poland) all he could get were Soviet-made motorcycles, which, as brilliant as they were, had a tendency to die suddenly after ~1000km even if bought a new one. But my dad let me in on a secret - he said that even if you bought, you had to take it completely apart, including the engine, re-lubricate everything, replace seals with a different type, put it all together and then you got yourself a best bike in the world - it wouldn't fall apart from few thousand km, it would serve you for years. He also used to believe that the ability to take apart and assemble a motorcycle is a good thing to learn.

Me? I believe it's great that I live in a free country where I can buy a new motorcycle and not have to take it apart to make it safe to use, or consider engine-building skill to be essential.

And as much as I enjoy working with software, I don't think reinstalling windows just to avoid spyware should be considered essential, or that regular people should have to know how to do it. For your regular Mr or Mrs Smith reinstalling is not a valuable skill - computers are tools which should just work.

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