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http://www.computeraid.org/ refurbishes and ships this stuff to africa and beyond!

...Where they beat it with rocks to rescue the tiny bits of gold inside, and throw the rest in a pit somewhere. Edward Burtynsky showed me this, in bright stunning detail. I hope the systems would find their way to a useful home, but the odds are slim.

http://www.computeraid.org/ refurbishes and ships this stuff to africa and beyond!

You could one from CAI, if you are in the non profit sector.

Here's a perk of living in (even rural) Canada: I go down to the garage/general/liquor store, and there on the shelf is Havana Club, "Ron puro Cubano," mmm, great is right. And cuban coffee in the cupboard, it's only pretty good but it's organic.

There may be long-term competitive benefits accruing to Cuba out of the blockade and its hardships.

The whole island has pretty much gone organic, as part of the austerity produced by the embargo, and they're trying to turn that constraint into a strength. When the embargo finally drops in the US, watch for cuban specialty products showing up in the organic food stores.

They need an internationally credible domestic certification system to really flourish, however the embargo has forced them to look hard at their local food security, so they'd be okay if international trade was interrupted. They have international trade in things like organic fruits and coffee, and they've made interesting innovations with domestic distribution in mind, like the Organopónicos.

The embargo has created constraints that make it an interesting testbed for development without the overwhelming influence of large transnationals. It's a race between the international organic sector to help establish Cuba as an entrenched organic ag system and the influx of Life Sciences transnationals that might happen if there's regime change.

Cuba's ripe turf for donated linux-ready systems, so support that goal in some way. There's enough real zeal for independence and common interests to make it a interesting test bed for a society running on open-source software.

"One thing that I notices when I read the article is that the distributors were suggesting that for most failures other than an LCD failure the thing would probably just be discarded"

He didn't actually say discarded, what he said they would be repaired at government depots or replaced.

"There is no mention of whether this has been considered, or if these devices may be RoHS compliant"

You're kidding right? .. So projects like Computer Aid International should be banned. Incidentally the cost of these free computers usually works out at around £10,720 per 20ft container.

was: Toss em in the dump? (Score:1)

Type 'computer recycle charity' into google, and see just how many hits you get. Or click this link ComputerAid International if you're too lazy :)

The $100 computer thing is more about a PC that can be used in places where there isn't the kind of electricity supply that would be needed to power most PCs.

Most of the problem isn't about corporate data - any charity that recycles computers guarantees that the data is wiped and uses specialist equipment to clean the drives, but that they only accept relatively good computers.

Look at ComputerAid International that uses MoD-specified data wiping tools, but won't accept anything less than a 450Mhz P3.

Wanna provide developing nations a PC for under $100?
DONATE your old PC.
Stop being a let's catch the headlines bullshitter and adress the PROBLEM instead of YOUR CORPORATE EGO.

Depending on where you are, Computer Aid International may be able to help. If you're in the Bristol/Avon or Reading areas of the UK, a great little charity called Computers for African Schools might be interested if the machine is at least a P75, 32MB RAM, 1GB HDD. These guys do some excellent work, refurbishing these machines and shipping them out to Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. I work with them on occasion, not so much because I want to help the third world (though of course that's important) but mainly because I hate to see good machines go to waste.

They take old machines, reformat them and send them to schools in southern Africa. They've shipped over 4,500 machines so far, of which I've provided about a dozen.

Don't crush 'em, destroy 'em, leave 'em to moulder in boxes or fool around with Beowulf: do something worthwhile.

-- Liam P.