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Re: [school-discuss] Donating 500 F/OSS Computers to Schools... SATURDAY!! (Pizza & Schwag from Mozilla!!)



Our PC donation program is a "Care of the Earth" initiative out of my Sunday worship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, and is by definition to be a sustainable effort, so I promise to keep it going if not annually, then quarterly or even monthly. I'd say the monumental difference is between a $50 and a $400 PC, and don't forget the $10/month cost minimum of Internet connectivity from the home. I've recommended that home PCs we donate include a $10 USB memory key that students can use to save files and then bring to school to print homework or parents take to Kinko's/Target to print out resumes/photos. This obviates the need for needy homes to have printers/ink or to have Internet connectivity, neither of which they can typically afford.

Will keep the group posted of our progress, and Mahalo nui loa for everything you do Scott!

Best, Daniel

R. Scott Belford wrote:

I think you pretty much nailed it, Mr. D. I am, however, fiddling with Debian and Debian Edu for the stand-alones and servers. Some people end up really liking DSL on the older computers, but these are the more elite. I like the Puppy.

We've pretty much always taken this approach though the increasing number of P4s/Athlons/Opterons is changing it:

399 mhz and slower - Thin Client/puppy/dsl
400 mhz to 599 mhz - firewall/content filter/puppy/xubuntu
600 mhz to 1 ghz - stand alones of any flavor
1 ghz and up - Thin client servers or workstations with expected video/graphical editing/processing.

Clonezilla is master of the universe in this environment, and I don't know how I lived so long without it.

Try not to limit this to a one time or an occasional event. It needs to be a way of life until everyone who wants or needs a computer can get one. I realize that this is flying perilously close to the emerging, inexpensive, energy-efficient PCs and PDAs. For many, though, there is still a monumental difference between $50 and $200.

Rock on, Daddy-O.

--
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation