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Refurbishing PCs For Charity?
Used PC Guy asks: "I'm trying to run a program to recycle PCs for charity to give to underprivileged kids. Trouble is, these kids have never seen a PC. What should I teach the kids if they're about 14-21? Should I teach Windows, Linux or both? What hardware should I be requesting, and what's the best way to test the influx of hardware that's coming in quickly, efficiently and reliably to make sure won't need servicing within another 6 months?"
Depending on the availability of software, I'd stick with Windows. As much as we'd like to think Linux is going to get big as a desktop OS , it isn't definate, and will probably be a long way down the road, especially in the US. Although if for some reason you don't have the copies of windows that came with these PCs (which is likely the case), and windows-like Linux distro would probably be best. At least that's my 2 cents (as a big Linux/UNIX user).
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Use some sort of software that erases everything every time the computer reboots - like deepfreeze. Then instruct the users to save everything to a seperate partition. That way, you won't have to do as much security support work. If they really haven't used a computer before, they won't know what they're missing. This can increase the number of computers you can support a lot.
Simon's Rock College
The operating system doesn't matter that much. Teach them how to use the internet in a responsible way, avoinding obviously dangerous websites, how to write e-mails in a matter people will appreciate, etc.
Learn them how to use the mostly used things: word processor (a typing course would help as well), spreadsheet, even the stupid slideshow creation :) Any office suite will do, it's not that much of a difference when they got the main points.
Learn them how to install software! How to deal with all the popups you get when installing this, it really is something you should get a hang of, and you'll need it often later on.
Learn them to use html, make a website, get to understand the stuff that's behind it.
And the coolest would be: learn them to program a bit! I played with LOGO when I was a kid, it really helped me later on.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
It's easier when you're showing strength in numbers, you know. One man outfits just don't have the same credibility.
I spent about 2 years trying to teach computer skills to kids and adults in a developing nation, and I learned a few things about this kind of work.
If licensing is available (or doesn't concern you), you may as well start by teaching Windows, at least for basic mouse and keyboarding skills. You'll probably have inconsistant hardware in your systems, but as much as I hate to admit it, Windows makes it easier to present a consistant interface.
Once the kids learn a little about computer basics, you can start teaching them some more advanced skills. This is where you can turn your problems on their side... You'll probably quickly accumulate piles of unusable components, but these can be valuable teaching materials, since you can use them to show the kids what's inside the computer. As they learn more, you can get the kids to help you test, assemble, and repair more systems.
If you can teach the kids to do your work (requesting donations, testing, building, repairing, and teaching), then your project will be successful and sustainable.
I wasn't able to teach all the students how to build computers (we didn't have enough 'junk' components to try that), but I did get them to go from no computer experience to making simple webpages (using only notepad) and useful spreadsheets.
A few more tips:
1) Observe what the kids do and adjust what you teach accordingly, especially to avoid time sinks (Word, with all its clipart, wordart, and fonts proved to be a big waste of time).
2) Try to find innovative ways to teach file management. This is not intuitively obvious to most kids, but it is important, and can get to be a problem when they start producing hundreds of documents
3) Internet / WWW are probably more trouble than they're worth.
4) Ban floppy disks
5) If you don't have a LAN, a USB Flash drive and some simple scripts can be good for quickly copying materials to each machine.
If you have the money, why spend it on software? Spend the money on good broadband connection and networking the computers. If you have all that, spend it on books that you can keep in the place and possibly loan out so they can read some thing on their own.
My suggestion would be to use Ubuntu. And when you show them software, show them cross-platform solutions. Firefox/Opera, Thunderbird or some webmail, Gaim, Gimp, OpenOffice.org2.
I mean, that's the crux of learning computers. Typing documents and emails. Sending IMs to stay connected. Looking up stuff online for learning, entertainment and procrastination.
My brother has a scanner and he lost the drivers for it. It was a pain to find them online. For me, with Ubuntu, it worked without any setting up. I was surprised. If you're getting hardware that you might not have the driver CD for, Linux really is much better at support (unless you can hunt down the drivers online).
But the main thing is, people are capable of learning if you have faith in them and put in effort and create a good atmosphere. If you dumb everything down too much, then they'll learn less. But if you expect more, they'll surpise you. Don't be afraid to teach them about the hardware a little bit and the network. They might not fully grasp everything, but they'll be a little better off. And you'll be able to spot the smarter ones who'll be more motivated to learn.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Somewhere on MS's site it has a page about if you can receive donated Windows licenses and terms
Yeah, sure, and then they make you jump thru hoops by having the original bill of sale when the SPA comes calling. And they will, bet the farm on it as you are a VERY high profile target.
Put something like Ubuntu-5.10 on them. These people may not be already windows indoctrinated to the point that they can't learn how to run firefox in 5 minutes, and get their email setup and running in 15, most of which is negotiating a connection to the net from their ISP of choice. Make sure iptables, portsentry and tcpwrappers are installed and setup for outgoing requests establishing the path, and trash ANYTHING that comes in un-invited. And setup the update tool to do it every night, or if its not on then, makes sure anacron knows about it by makeing sure its running in the startup.
That combination is pretty bullet proof, I've had 3 attacks get as far as the log before they were turned off absolutely in 3 years on a dsl circuit. And 2 of those came from known addresses as they were from compromised DNS servers at my ISP, verizon. They're windows lovers, obviously.
You may have a few more questions to field early in the game, but in the end you will have made a new generation of computer savvy people who are NOT slaves to the M$ machine in Redmond. And that is of course a very desirable thing at the end of the day, you have shown that the M$ way is NOT the only way, and the linux way is far more secure.
Handle the root access by making them prove enough knowledge to be able to handle it before you give it out. That will save a lot of phone calls right there.
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Cheers, gene
Really I think you're going to have two problems. The first is simply getting machines with ancient (windows 95/98/ME) operating systems on them. Getting legal modern Windows operating systems is either going to be expensive, or the hardware you have simply won't run it. (Driver issues, low memory, etc). Honestly I'd really avoid going down the route of using any Windows OS before Windows 2000. 95/98/ME are really dinosaurs these days, and no one should be giving away machines with them on it.
So, while other people are telling you to run Windows because it's standard and it's what kids will encounter, I'm going to tell you to run Linux because it's cheap, will support most of the hardware, has drivers built in that will auto-detect, etc. Ultimately you really want to only be supporting one operating system. The best OS for that job is going to be Linux. It's really no fun trying to hunt down what video card each of the 10 different machines you have sitting around.
Honestly for kids 14-21 the OS doesn't really matter for what they should be using the machine for. I assume that's schoolwork, research, etc. You might get some complaints that game X or special software package Y doesn't run on the computer, but that sounds pretty minor. They'll be able to figure out Windows computers once they've used linux, so I don't see many problems of converting if that ever became an issue. Computers are ultimately a tool, and unless you're going to be a tool-maker or tool-supporter, the choice of the tool doesn't really matter. To make an analogy just get them familiar with using hammers, screwdrivers, and saws and don't worry about which brand it is.
The second problem is getting broken hardware. There's a few things that can help you here. I'd first look at memtest86 to test the memory. Let it run for a few hours and see if there's errors. Secondly I'd run some CPU thrashing tests. Many people seem to like Prime95 from mersenne.org, and run the torture test. Other programs like the distributed.net client will also stress the CPU. Finally I'd get familiar with smartctl on linux. This program will access the SMART monitoring that's built into hard drives made in the last 5 or 6 years. From this you can tell if the HD is junk, or soon to be junk.
You're going to get a lot of Junk. And by junk I mean computers with 64 megs of ram and a 233 megahertz processor. It's hard to tell you where the line exists, since I don't know what kids are going to do with these computers. Cannabalize components, but don't be afraid to just throw stuff out, or maybe turn these components into a class where kids get to "build their own computer".
AccountKiller
Has it come to this? I like Linux and use Linux, too. Should I rend my hair shirt, flog myself bloody, roll in mud and parade the streets on my knees to show everyone my shame? "Whatever you do, people, do not do what I do! I am a bad example!"
Guy said it's for kids who aren't familiar with computers at all. In every case I've seen kids absorb Linux like a sponge, learn to equate later exposure to Windows and Macs with it. They just take it as a given and keep learning. Why? Because they haven't had 20 years of brainlock in Windows-Only-World.
My daughter has no trouble at all using Linux at home and Windows at school and at the library. The only way it's affected her as far as the outside world is concerned is that she giggles and points when Windows crashes (because they're not supposed to do that) and she shakes her head in disgust when she sees that her only games are freecell/hearts/solitaire/minesweeper. Oh, wait, lemme second-guess the flame-fighters on this one: I'm abusing my children by showing them Linux, right?
Despite what a lot of other posters have mentioned, I'd have to say that Linux would be the best choice. As a distribution maintainer myself, I get a lot of e-mails from users – and a lot of it isn't just the usual support stuff, a good deal of the mail I get is from ordinary people who decided to switch to Linux (and my distro was the first one).
I may be a bit biased on this, but I'd have to say the only real problem is typically the installation. After that, it's a snap. If the machines have enough horsepower – for my own distro, a Pentium-233 with 96MB can handle KDE, Firefox, and OpenOffice.org rather nicely – I'd say stick on KDE, create a default user account and make it auto-login, assign a strong root password – but tell them what it is! – and maybe set up some shortcuts on the desktop to any apps they may use. Problem solved!
I'd have to say that everyone in my family seems to like my distro too. Even my parents. Which may sound sort of stupid and obvious, but not really – I had to fight tooth and nail to get them to try Linux out! They just did not want to give up Windows, at all! But as soon as they saw it, they were hooked too...
But one quick suggestion – if you have to teach them on Windows, please, do yourself (and them) a favor and DON'T USE INTERNET EXPLORER. I'm obviously no expert on psychology, but I've noticed that most people, once they find something they like, generally don't want to switch off to something better unless it's forced upon them. So if you get them used to using an insecure, non-standard browser such as Explorer, it will likely serve you right when you can't convince them to try Firefox because of the unpatched security vulnerability du jour in IE.
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Well, tinkering and tweaking may teach you to be a better geek, but for someone who's just trying to do something creative in a non-geek area of expression, being forced to tinker and tweak can be really frustrating. What got my goat was that the original poster pointed to this as a benefit: "Frustration builds character!"
My feeling is that we geeks will always find things to tinker with--some kids with donated PCs will undoubtedly download a Linux distro and start hacking away. Other kids might want to write the next great American novel, or even just read it on the internet. Erecting roadblocks to these aims, even in the name of computer literacy, won't help anyone.
Show them that instead of Firefox, they have IE, or they can download Firefox for Windows. Show them they have Paintbrush instead of Gimp, but they can download Gimp for Windows or buy Photoshop. Show them they have Outlook instead of Thunderbird, but etc... Show them they have Notepad or Word instead of the 50-some editors in Linux. Show them they have freecell-hearts-minesweeper-solitaire instead of the 50-some games on Linux. Be sure to point out that they can no longer switch to alternate virtual desktops, have their pick of ten different window managers, or have all the software they want for it free. Teach them the new keyboard combination "Ctrl-Alt-Del", and remind them that they have to pay attention to virus reports now, because they apply to them.
Of course with my kids, nobody did this with them. They just saw and learned Linux at home, saw and learned Windows at school, and took it to be the natural order of things. Young minds are open; let's not spoil it. They'll be old and mean and dumb just like we grownups soon enough.
At Free Geek, we use Linux. And when people ask me why, I usually end up defending Microsoft.
I know that people pirate and copy Microsoft products all the time. And at many levels this is kind of done with a wink wink nudge nudge by everyone involved, including probably Microsoft themselves.
However, when you are running an organization, and you are producing computers, people can start asking questions. Which means, if you are installing Windows, make sure it is legal! If you are churning out lots of computers with pirated Windows, you will probably get caught. It doesn't matter if it is for charity.
Now, that does mean that you will be paying 200 dollars a license, and 400 dollars for a license of Office. This means that if you wanted to give out, say, ten computers with Windows XP Home Edition and Office Standard Edition, you would be paying 6000 dollars.
At Free Geek, aside from any philosophical ideas, we can't afford to spend 6000-10000 dollars a week on licenses for computers we are giving out.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Check out what the local community colleges are emphasizing in their course curriculum and tailor your lessons for them in this way.
Encourage the kids to develop an interest in this stuff. Then, when the time comes, encourage the older teens to apply for IT programs at a local college and earn a degree in that field and make computers a career. So if they see that local college X does courses in web design, and you already taught them web design, they be very willing to make a career out of it. This might be a goal that seems feasible to them and this should prepare them to live a stable life in the future which they haven't experienced before.