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Seeking Laptop Donation for a Good Cause?
Johannes asks: "I'm working in a home for mentally heavily disabled children and I'm the computertechnician here. We are in need of a old notebook (486, min 120MB HDD, min. 4 MB Ram, B/W-Screen) to keep all the information of our children. After my request to IBM, Sony, Siemens I always received the same answer: 'Our budget doesn't allow us this year to help you'. Are these companies so poor that they can't not even find a notebook with our needed specifications? Anyway, until today we weren't successful, so I would like to ask all readers from Slashdot: does someone out in the big world have notebook, which he doesn't need anymore? Our home is situated in South Africa near Pretoria and we are fully dependant on donations." The standard answer IBM, Sony and the others provided seems like a dodge to me. Does anyone out there have a laptop to donate for a good cause?
Sadly the cost of shipping something to africa is more prohibative than the cost of any old laptop.
Oh a side note, I wouldn't bother asking the computer corporations directly. A good place to start looking are groups trying to dispose of old laptops. I'd start with universities and state and local governments, and then maby move onto large corperations, you'd probably want to talk to the techs themselves if possible (sure they don't make such decisions, but generally they are the ones that know that they have a bunch of old laptops that need getting rid of)
Don't you have eBay in S.A.?
/. in S.A. could find a similar local deal...
486 DX4 75 Mhz Laptop. 12 Mb RAM, 340 Mb Hard Disk Drive, 3.5" Floppy Drive Suit Student for cheap Wordprocessor Good Condition
36UKP on eBay just now. 9 hours to go. Surely someone reading
Corporations costs go through the roof for every little thing. To release an old laptop, someone has to first find one, make sure it's unused, if it is used order and commission a replacement, blah blah blah. Hence I'm not surprised by the response you got.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
You don't say what operating system you need, or what software you need to run on it. For example, do you require a specific version of Microsoft OS, are there issues with software you are using that will keep you from using a later version of that OS? Are you planning on installing a Linux of *BSD OS? Do you need a modem? Do you need network?
You also need to provide details about the charity. In the US I could look up the details to make sure that this wasn't a scam. Sorry to say that, but it's always a possibility, you know. Do you have some sort of evidence that you are a charity? Is there someone who can vouch for you?
Please reply publically. These are questions that a lot of people will be asking themselves, and it may help you to get what you need.
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal. (Mark Twain)
Even in South Africa, what are the chances of those companies still having an old 486 laptop lying around somewhere? They could probably give him a new one at less expense to themselves than paying staff to hunt up the parts to cobble together the antique he's asking for and to make sure that it works.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.