docdtv
Group: Members
Posts: 14
Joined: Oct. 2004 |
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Posted: Oct. 28 2004,02:15 |
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| Quote (clivesay @ Oct. 14 2004,23:59) | Many of you who have been around here for awhile know that I started a not for profit organization in Sept, 2003 called No Computer Left Behind, Inc. My goal was to refurbish old computers and give them to needy children by working through local schools. It started as a church ministry. Up to that time I was strictly a PC user with NO development experience whatsoever. I quickly realized that the reason many people are not doing this is because of software. NFP's were having to pay $5 per license for Win98. That doesn't sound like much until you take 5 x 1000 computers. I didn't want the organization's success to be determined by whether I had $5 to put a PC together...
Chris |
Chris,
You have an interesting story and some sentiments I share. With our common appreciation for DSL, perhaps we might at some point cooperate in a way that serves both of us.
But I scratch my head in confusion when you cite the $5 per seat cost for Windows 98 as a barrier. Those PCs will not run on love - they will need electricity - and one will face electrical costs of $5 EACH time one consumes little more than 50 Kw-Hr.
That's not even to talk about the considerable costs of handling the PCs between when they are donated and disbursed - even if nearly all of that is volunteer labor.
cf. http://news.com.com/2100-1040-938746.html which says:
"...existing recycling programs are designed to handle the electronic devices consumers already own. HP, for instance, charges between $13 and $34 to take a PC off someone's hands, while IBM charges $29.99, and Dell says people should expect to pay between $15 and $25."
cf. Cox News Service in 2000:
"[At a] computer collection day at the [Ohio] Clark County Fairgrounds... a computer monitor costs $19 to leave... and a computer system intact was $3 a pound."
I think a bigger issue in helping poor [and many other] people usefully own a PC is minimizing the cost of support. Job one in this effort is making it trivial to restore the PC to its arrival condition (without erasing any user data it holds.)
For PCs that can CD-boot DSL, it is not a very big deal to fashion a bootable CD that simply boots (e.g. Linux) and then restores a bit-by-bit image of the C drive (and master boot record) from the CD itself, whether the installed system is based on Linux, Windows 98 or any other OS. (One would leave unmolested other hard disk partitions in which user data is kept for this very reason.)
The only messy issue is the copyright question. I am not an attorney, but by the precedent of long corporate practice, backing up your working computer system is not construed as unprotected by Fair Use. But it is equally true that when PC makers provide purchasers with a disk of the kind I describe, they bundle it with an agreement the user must confirm before the installation goes forth - and it often includes a numerical code idiosyncratic to the disk which the user must enter. (Of course that generally doesn't *physically* prevent one from duplicating said disk at trivial cost and giving the copy and code to another party, any legal issues be hanged!)
The issue of whether Microsoft or whomever would be happy with a less fussy such "restore disk" is obviated by using software which is distributed without the restrictions common to commercial software.
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