Posted on 12/02/2007 10:20:15 AM PST by Pete
Our church provides Christmas presents for foster children and families where the father is in prison. This year, my family and another family have signed up to get gifts for a family of five children.
They need coats and clothes, which we are getting along with toys. However, the oldest child asked for a computer. I wanted to see if anyone out there on FR had an old one they would be willing to donate (if you are in Maryland outside DC, I can pick it up. Otherwise, I would be willing to pay shipping).
If you are interested, please Freep mail me. Thanks for considering. (I thought I would give this a try after I heard that my sister posted a request for a free piano on line and got three offers!).
Argh! It’s been a year since we last built one up to give away and they had a free recycling event in Seattle, so I filled up the car with all the old computers and monitors and took them in. Hopefully somebody out there will have something...
The local Salvation Army collection point has a big sign: NO COMPUTERS. They have so many obsolete machines donated that they don’t know what to do with them.
This is yet another signal of our pervasive prosperity, for the computers they reject still run as fast as they day they were a hot consumer item, and most of them have enough power and memory to run a simple browser and connection software. But even a simple machine is too simple for poor people, who appear to be willing to do without than have a machine that won’t run the other software they want to run.
It’s probably REALLY important to clean and disinfect your computer’s memory before you donate it to a kid who has a father in prison. Before you donate it to anybody.
Obsolete means what? That they can not run Windows XP or Vista? Almost anything down to a Pentium II/Pentium Pro (or even down to the Pentium level) can run flavors of Linux (and other open-source software), given enough memory and disk space.
Of course, the side effect is that the average user can't just go out there and download Bonzi Buddy, any random executable that he finds online, spyware, etc. like crazy.
I always wipe my old hard drives with a 3 pound hammer.
No one is EVER going to be able to read it after I use my patented 'wiping' sysytem.
Thrift shops reject computers because of the onerous disposal rules. They must pay to have the unusable computers properly recycled. It can cost them more than 20 dollars to dispose of a single system.
In addition, before they sell the computer, they have to wipe the system, and either sell the system without an OS or pay to install a new copy of Windows.
Darik’s Boot and Nuke will completely wipe a hard drive. It overwrites all the info on the drive so it cannot be recovered. This is the program to use if you are donating or selling an old machine.
It means simply, will it run current software? End of story.
It doesn't mean can you rip it apart and rebuild it with pirated software, freeware, or a linux os, 3 mismatched mem chips, a split ata cable and a dead keyboard.
It means a kid with no or minimal computer knowledge will get his first home computer.
Donate a great computer to a nerdy kid.
Chances are that the foster care family will take the computer for themselves or sell it.
If they can’t afford the computer .. how will they afford the cost of internet service ..?? Or the cost of supplies for a computer - printer .. paper .. etc.
There are computers at the public library and every school.
Don’t know about your area but a lot of regions have online classified ads that one can use for free. Many will have a section for ‘wanted’, ‘computers’, ‘misc’, etc in which I bet you could advertise your need and maybe find one locally.
Are you implying that freeware (including open-source software like Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, and so forth) is a bad thing? That IS current software. And, honestly, having just installed and used the latest versions of Ubuntu last night, the whole thing went without a hitch, compared to Windows XP and Vista (we did have glitches with the commercial software during the most recent installs, on the shinier, newer hardware, too).
If the standard for donation is shiny new computers, fresh off the assembly line, then I am afraid that there will be very few donations. Let me put it this way: if the local charity says that it will only accepts brand new cars as donations, then many older vehicles that run perfectly fine (but aren't shiny and new and might have some mileage) will never get donated.
You wrote: “Chances are that the foster care family will take the computer for themselves or sell it.”
I would like to stand up for all of you foster parents who are reading this. Thank you for reaching out to the foster children of our country. I appreciate your compassion and sacrifice. THANK YOU. And no, I do not believe that (most of) you are thieves who would steal a kid’s computer.
You're starting to catch on. But you missed the point of just who gets the old computer and their ability to maintain it's workability.
I had a computer biz for many years, tried to donate many many computers over that period of time including inventory when i shut it down. The people who ultimately get used computers usually have trouble just trying to figure out where the on switch is.
No. It means any PC.
/ mac sarc
LOL!
I would love to switch to a Mac, but we have plenty of PCs (running Windows or Linux), and the money is just not there.
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