Sounds very appealing, but combine Intel ME with the fact that the laptop is made by a Chinese firm and the fact that Lenovo has previously snuck spyware onto its machines — I don't think one can really trust it to be secure, even running Linux.
So are MacBooks. Designed in California, sure, but they’re made in China.
At a minimum, I would be very suspicious of anything pre-installed on a Lenovo laptop and that includes the ones that ship with Ubuntu.
[0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nas...
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2616335/techology-business...
So, while tangentially relevant, it is like bashing samsung washing machines for touchwiz on samsung phones.
Executive management bears at least some responsibility in something as egregious as that - the fish rots from the head, as the expression goes.
those aren't really the same. in lenovo's case was breaching the consumer's trust, whereas in your example, it's purely a design decision.
I wouldn't consider a MacBook competition for one of these, because a MacBook doesn't cleanly run Linux. Maybe something from Purism?
This is a very real concern. How can we be sure that they aren't doing this again? A security audit is not part of the review.
(on the assumption the main risk is Windows crapware installed at the end of manufacturing rather than low-level firmware backdoors)
Any particular reason why? Apple always seemed quite anti-user to me with "you are holding it wrong", walled gardens, incompatible ports,...
So whilst Apple have been putting anti-tracking features in their products [0] Lenovo have been putting putting rootkits on their laptops [1] in theirs.
Personally I think I'm going to move to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu.
[0] https://guce.oath.com/collectConsent?brandType=eu&.done=http...
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/lenovo-rootkit-ensured-its-sof...