If this [1] Lenovo employee's answer is a real deal, and this was in fact sanctioned by MS, I wonder if their actual goal was to prevent people from installing Windows 8/7/whatever. MS did go on record by saying they are willing to block people from installing old versions on new hardware. [2]
Given the quality of answers to questions that I'm used to by computer manufacturer "product experts" online... it's really unlikely that that's actually the case.