This pile of laptops is getting kind of big. I took three down at random. One didn’t post, another didn’t have a battery and the third i couldn’t find a power supply for. I am sure that some of them work or could work with some love… Do we want these laptops? Can I recycle them at the hackery?
Probably the two best people to people to answer this question is @TyIsI and @toma. I will wait 1 week before taking any actions.
@Jarrett mentioned this in another thread. Would you donate a few of them to Kamloops Makerspace? We only have two running computers at our space right now. One of our members comes to Vancouver every week, I think she will be there Thursday and Friday. Let me know if there is someone she can contact to coordinate a pickup.
The Neil Squire Society is the only national not-for-profit organization in Canada that has for over thirty years empowered Canadians with disabilities through the use of computer-based assistive technologies, research and development, and various employment programs. Through our work, we help our clients remove barriers so that they can live independent lives and become active members of the workplace and our society. Specializing in education and workplace empowerment, the Society has served over 29,000 people since 1984.
I’m really against donating crappy computers to deserving organisations unless they come well tested and supported. They can get systems from places like freegeek, they’ll be tested and have a level of support that we can’t provide. I’ve worked for a few big companies, that had policies like this, give cash, people’s time or give nothing - ewaste everything so it goes into a system that sorts out the crap and distributes it fairly
My standards are pretty low, if I dispose of something, it needs to be melted down (if it hasn’t been already) - I think a lot of people at vhs are similar. This is likely to be junk, lets keep a few and move them on.
I was impressed by the state of the space when I last visited, ++ to everyone who’s put time into this. I put a lot of time into the bunker, I don’t have so much right now, but these things ebb and flow.
Is it still the Hackery that picks up our ewaste from VHS? If so then they’d been the ones most deserving of the extra laptops as they could do the best to find people to use the parts.
Speaking of, I do want a working one to replace the one I have with a broken screen. Battery, memory and HD not required. Guess we need to inventory whats all there try at least find some good working ones to keep.
What is waste to you may not be waste to someone else.
The Neil Squire “donate a computer program” is doing the exactly same thing as Free Geek which is keeping what they can use (i.e. ram, hard drives, etc) and responsibly disposing of the rest so please don’t be upset with me for making this suggestion.
Perhaps check out the provided link and see if you still feel so strongly about sending old computers to them.
I’ve been through them all looking for parts for my old latitude with no
luck. Most of them have little or minimal RAM (like 2 gigs). Hard drives if
any are minimal. All are 32 bit. Most have no power supplies. Most of them
are HP.
I was going to ask how old “old” in the context of the title of this thread is but, if the notebook computers have at least 2 GiB of main memory, I guess they are from the 2000s to present.
Tuesday I confirmed only 1 that works. IBM thinkpad has ubuntu installed. Tagged. Probably the one Funville looked at.
3x IBM’s that have different problems. 2 with screen problems. Tagged and pilled on the right side.
I took 3 more home that didn’t have HD’s I was trying to get one working with XP so I could use it for my class on Thursday. No such luck yet. Might be the version of XP I’m using as the bios sees the HD’s but xp doesn’t during setup.
The other 15 or so laptop’s I couldn’t find a power brick to run them.
ANYONE? have a universal laptop top power supply that could lend it to VHS to check the others out?