Folks! Since quite some time now the kernel exports the DMI machine information below /sys/class/dmi/id/. You may stop now parsing the output of dmidecode thus depending on external tools and privileged code.

For example, to read your BIOS vendor string all you need to do is this:

$ read bv < /sys/class/dmi/id/bios_vendor
$ echo $bv

Which is of course much simpler, and cleaner, and safer than anything involving dmidecode.

Thank you for your time!