“Crossing Lenovo off of my prospective list of laptops for the next few years, if not forever.”
My wife bought one last year and has had real problems with what appeared to be pop-up related virus. Cost $100 plus to correct, much better but still not right.
Lenovo developed a reputation for making high quality computers. Too bad that management got greedy. The returns to Lenovo on adware have to be very small, much smaller than the loss due to reputation damage.
But I'd NEVER spend any kind of big money with the Chinese.
IMHO, any country that has a "Propaganda Dept of the Central Committee" 15 years into the 21st century, not only isn't worthy of trust, but is manned by a totality of professionally paid for liars.
As soon as I saw that China was buying Lenovo I knew they'd be jiggered to call back home with user data. There's no way that China, being China COULDN'T do this.
Buy anything above $100 from china band you're gonnna wake up with the bends, black eyes, drugged and drunk and anything else they can think to do to you. they not only don't care for you, they don't LIKE you one little bit and don't care a whit if your're hurt or not.
Deal with China and their Propaganda departments (which not only CAN lie, but MUST lie to meet their mission) not or face a disaster.