| jadoba on 23 Apr 2008 16:15:37 -0700 |
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On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 06:20:58PM -0400, Steve Phillips wrote: > I'll go against common wisdom and suggest *not* donating old computers to > schools. My wife teaches for the Philly school district and they get > donations all the time of cast-off computers. Due to licensing and technical > support issues, those computers end up being stockpiled in a room, with an > ultimate fate of being dumpstered. I understand that being a completely OSX > shop may be unusual, but I would think that the Microsoft licensing would > cause trouble within the administration. > > Please don't suggest Linux. Most of the programs that my wife uses would > require tinkering to run and I doubt I could explain GNU software to her > principal with out her eyes glazing over. > > Steve A few months ago someone dropped off 3 CRT monitors, 4 keyboards and 4 mice at the elementary school where I presently work. No machines, just the displays and peripherals. It ended up costing us time and effort to get rid of them, as we have no need for CRT monitors (we actually have 7 perfectly good spare CRT monitors sitting in the storage room...) The keyboards and mice were kind of spiffy, but we have no need for them either, and they just went on top of the pile of 15 keyboards and into the huge, crowded box of old ball mice. It was a bit discouraging. So, yes, I agree that schools are NOT dumping grounds for old, battered and useless hardware, but that is where the agreement stops. What the school I am currently working at most desperately needs is more machines. Second comes things like networking cards, optical mice, sticks of ram, or other various things to upgrade the current machines. Third would be, believe it or not, good furniture (new tables, not chairs) or a networking cage (ever see bookends used to prop up a 10/100 switch?) If you are in the giving mood, please contact me off-list or call me (267-297-0822). I will gladly take working machines. If your company does not want to part with their hdd's, that is OK too, diskless machines are still good for us. As long as the machine is better than (no lie) a celeron 1.4ghz with 256 MB of RAM and with a working CD-ROM, or any pentium4, the school would be glad to accept it as a donation. If you hand us a machine, we will gladly take a single operational CRT monitor from you too, thats ok. Or not, either way... Oh, and if you are worried about licensing, I am not. If the machines have an invalid or nonexistant license, they can still be used for parts. Also, Linux will be going on a few more computers at the school this summer. -- James Barrett Attachment:
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