Lenovo Ushers in a New Era of Mobile Workstation Power and Performance with Lenovo ThinkPad P50 and P70
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@johnhooks said:
@scottalanmiller Oh ok, I guess that makes sense. I never realized it had to be verified by them, but now that I think of it, who else could verify it?
"Verified" is one of those tricky marketing words that sounds great and you can get people to say "of course we want that" when, in fact, it is generally a potentially very bad thing.
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@johnhooks said:
So how can we load Linux on through UEFI? They just allow it for now?
Linux itself isn't a thing. Some OSes are verified, some are not. UEFI can be made to be controlled by the user, sometimes not.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
So how can we load Linux on through UEFI? They just allow it for now?
Linux itself isn't a thing. Some OSes are verified, some are not. UEFI can be made to be controlled by the user, sometimes not.
Oh ok.
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UEFI makes things really complex
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Who do you use? I have an ASUS and it's been fine so far. I wondered if it's worth it to get something like a System76?
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I haven't built a system in over a decade
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So I've been thinking. Who's the bigger devil out of this mess, Lenovo who was using a channel that was given to them (which lets face it, most people would do - not all but most) or Microsoft for giving them the ability?
This is in reference to the pre Windows executed code, not superfish.
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@johnhooks said:
So I've been thinking. Who's the bigger devil out of this mess, Lenovo who was using a channel that was given to them (which lets face it, most people would do - not all but most) or Microsoft for giving them the ability?
This is in reference to the pre Windows executed code, not superfish.
Lenovo is my feeling. Not to get into that debate (because I think agree with how this sounds) but you don't blame the gun, you blame the person who wields it. There are tons and tons of ways to be harmed out there and we can't rely on people not making weapons or tools that can be used as weapons but on the criminals who see an opportunity to do harm and leverage it.
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For example.... do we blame the creators of C for making a programming language? Or do we blame the person who actually wrote a Trojan and used it to do something bad?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
So I've been thinking. Who's the bigger devil out of this mess, Lenovo who was using a channel that was given to them (which lets face it, most people would do - not all but most) or Microsoft for giving them the ability?
This is in reference to the pre Windows executed code, not superfish.
Lenovo is my feeling. Not to get into that debate (because I think agree with how this sounds) but you don't blame the gun, you blame the person who wields it. There are tons and tons of ways to be harmed out there and we can't rely on people not making weapons or tools that can be used as weapons but on the criminals who see an opportunity to do harm and leverage it.
When you put it that way with the guns, I agree.
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@s.hackleman said:
Can someone "explain it like i'm 5" why you need this kind of power in a mobile workstation? It seems like complete overkill for me.
I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. The CPUs aren't that powerful. 32GB+ in a laptop is a minimum for me and I don't even run VMs, just multitask. If you need a workstation graphics card, however high-end, it's because you're doing 3D modeling or some other task that requires it. Developing for Oculus, for example, requires a very high end graphics card.
The idea behind a super high powered laptop is that you consolidate your workstations. You have a single laptop that replaces your desktop and you plug into monitors at the office and then take with you on the road without having to manage two different OSs, app sets, and setups.
I had to ditch the ASUS w/ the GTX 965 because it couldn't handle Oculus development. It also wouldn't allow for the use of 4 1440p monitors which I've now switched to ( ordered a stand yesterday ).
To me, these Lenovos aren't that powerful. Xeons are great at having tons of cores, not great at having blistering clock speeds.
I personally can't develop comfortably on less than a 3.5ish Ghz quad w/ HT ( somehow the 4-core i5 I had felt noticeably slower than the HT Xeon at about the same clock I'm on now ), 32GB, and specifically a Samsung SSD in rapid mode. Now that I'm finally on a legitimate graphics card and can see how dramatically it improves my computing experience I doubt I can ever shy away from that either. In fact the GTX 970 feels so nice that it's got me wondering whether I shouldn't upgrade to a 980 TI while I still can.
Just because you don't need something to get a job done doesn't mean that having it won't improve or dramatically improve your experience.
I'm actually excited about these workstations and the first UHD 17" screen I've seen. The idea of 64GB in a laptop and all of the things I could do with that is mouth-watering. You'd be surprised at how quickly professional editing and debugging tools combined w/ debugging code you're working with can saturate large amounts of RAM. I'm sure video editors, game-makers, 3D modelers, CADers, and other heavy duty pros make great use of systems like these.
For typical office peeps and light development though, you definitely don't need them. But honestly $2,000 is NOT expensive for a high-quality laptop ( not saying these are high-quality, I haven't touched one yet and I've seen a lot of shitty Lenovos at stores ), it's a bargain. You can configure some 17" Dell Precisions w/ less power than these that'll get you past $3,000 easily.
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@creayt I have to ask what you are developing that needs 32GB of RAM.
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@creayt said:
I'm not sure what you guys are talking about. The CPUs aren't that powerful. 32GB+ in a laptop is a minimum for me and I don't even run VMs, just multitask.
It's not that the products I develop use 32GB of RAM, it's that all of my tooling, web browsing, Creative Cloud apps, and debugging, etc. all ad up to more than 24 GB and I think rapid mode uses a handful of GB ( used to be limited to 1, I think I read that it maxes out at 10% of system as of the last few updates so somewhere around 3 GB ). There are certain projects I've written that do a heavy amount of complex relational data assembly and caching at startup and serve that from a RAM cache, so it's nice to allocate 10+ GB to that when I'm working on it, but that's not at all times. In any case, I've tried working on 8, 16, and 24 GB and inevitably get the Windows pop up that the OS is running out of RAM.
I'm excited for the days when containers come to Windows and my workstation has as much RAM as my server ( 256GB ).
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Well considering this mornings conversation with Scott, this equipment no matter how good it looks is a non starter for me...
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Bit late to the conversation.
Yoga Network Shims, any source articles of that to reference?
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@Breffni-Potter said:
Bit late to the conversation.
Yoga Network Shims, any source articles of that to reference?
There are tons, most articles only talk about it as malware as the majority of users are unaware of the concept of a network shim. That it was a network shim was blatant as it blocked sites like MangoLassi (how it was first detected around here) by intercepting the HTTP stream and not handling io.socket calls correct (very common in older proxies, so it was immediately clear what was happening) and by the fact that even a fresh install of Windows, even a direct from Microsoft one, had the issue instantly when the only available driver for the internal network cards, the one from Lenovo, was installed. The only source of the shim was in the network driver itself!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/02/19/superfish-need-to-know/
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From the above article:
But there’s a bigger concern that Lenovo is intercepting encrypted traffic so it can show ads on people’s computers. In the security world, this is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.
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Looks like they are still at it - though in a less notorious way this time.
The long and the short - Lenovo is using a method that security companies like LoJack have been using for years to install software into windows from the BIOS.
Microsoft has made this even easier for them by creating a new connection in the UEFI that is part of Windows itself.
On the surface, something like this seems really convenient for consumers (not needed for businesses - they have IT staff to build images, etc). You scratch install the system but of course Windows doesn't have drivers for the hardware, the BIOS pushes down a version of the driver into windows and the end user doesn't have to be concerned about using another computer to find drivers (assuming the network drivers in windows aren't there).
The main bad part is inclusion of OneKey Optimizer - which is being reported as Lenovo junkware - but other than claiming to clean up some temp files, I'm not really sure what the issue with this software is.
Frankly I fully expect to see embedded drivers like this on all future systems. Manufacturers are trying to find ways to reduce their support overhead. Pushing out at least a starter driver to get the system online, then a manufacturer update tool to get the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website - this seems like a win for the consumers - as long as it's implemented correctly (think TLS connections, etc).
