| This is getting increasingly disturbing with each new generation of hardware. You no longer have the right to own the hardware you buy. Now it has become a service subject to their terms. That Windows Platform Binary Table sounds disturbing and is ripe for being exploited. Interesting info found [1]: > Lenovo Service Engine (LSE) is a utility in the BIOS for certain Lenovo desktop systems. It automatically sends non-personally identifiable system data to a Lenovo server one time when the system is first connected to the internet and then does not send any additional data. > The system data that LSE collected includes machine type and model, system UUID, region and date. No personally identifiable information is collected. > Once this data is sent, the service is disabled automatically. > LSE uses the Microsoft Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT) capability. Microsoft has recently released updated security guidelines on how to best implement this feature. Lenovo’s use of LSE is not consistent with these guidelines and so Lenovo has stopped shipping desktop models with this utility and recommends customers with this utility enabled run a “clean up” utility that removes the LSE files from the desktop. Instructions on how to download and run this program are below. > The LSE functionality has been removed from newly manufactured systems. When some people insist on having a Libreboot/Coreboot supported laptop, they call them crazy and idealistic. Now this is what happens. It's just a shame that with Intel ME the Libreboot/Coreboot devs have given up on Intel machines. I'm very interested in the Purism Librem laptop but I have low hopes. Maybe the future will be ARM. [1] https://support.lenovo.com/nz/en/product_security/lse_bios_d... |
This isn't true. Libreboot is the fork that only works with completely free platforms, which the newer Intel chipsets make impossible. Coreboot is still very much committed to supporting new Intel chipsets, although the mainboard availability of course depends on what developers have time and interest for.
Google Chromebooks all ship with Coreboot, so they're fully supported and a great choice if you're trying to make the most free usable computer you can get. They can all run Linux, and some of them even Windows with a little more effort. They also have ARM-based ones, some of which are completely blob-free.
Also, if you're putting your hopes on Pursim this may be of interested to you: http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/08/09/the-truth-about-pu...