Dell starts selling Latitude laptops with Intel ME disabled

Several companies are working on ways to disable Intel's Management Engine (ME), a controversial feature that came in the news last month as security researchers found a way to hack this hidden layer that runs on Intel CPUs.

A couple of days ago, news popped up that Purism disables Intel ME on all its new laptops, and that System76 rolled out new firmware to disable Intel ME on existing 6th, 7th and 8th Gen Intel Core processor based laptops. But those are two pretty small players.

However, Liliputing reports that Dell is now also offering business customers the option to buy systems with Intel ME disabled. The website noticed Dell sells Latitude 14 Rugged, Latitude 15 E5570 and Latitude 12 Rugged series laptops with a configuration option to disable Intel ME. The system builder charges a small fee for this service, from $17 to $30. So far, the option is only offered for select, high-end business laptops.

While Intel doesn’t officially provide an option to disable its Management Engine, independent security researchers have discovered methods for doing that and we’re starting to see PC makers make use of those methods. I doubt this is something all PC vendors will do unless it’s proven that there’s great demand for this. But it’s not surprising that Dell is the first of the major PC makers to offer the option: Dell is also one of the few top PC companies that offers customers the option to configure some computers with Ubuntu Linux rather than Windows.