Pay it forward - 'Giving' Ubuntu to Windows Users

[Bart Silverstrim]

David Fox wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 5:11 PM, NoOp <glgxg at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
>> Some of you may recall that last year about this time I cobbled together
>> a recycled system, loaded Ubuntu on it, and ended up giving it to a
>> local teenager for Christmas. Happily, the kid (and his family) are
> 
> Do you have a county computer recycling center (or school district) in
> your area that might have use for them?

Just one side note about recycling to schools. Our school district does 
this, and I've complained in the past about schools being underfunded 
and understaffed as it is...but the number one problem we've seen with 
recycled systems is hard drive failure. Recycle systems, but small new 
hard drives are appreciated if possible, because some forget that 
support and time *do* equate to money as someone has to support them, 
and it's a time blaster to keep shuffling systems around because of 
drive failures occurring within weeks of deployment and I'm sure it's 
worse as an issue if you are gifting a recycled system to an individual 
and their data goes to the bit bucket in the process.

Hard drives can go anytime, but statistically speaking we've seen a high 
failure of hard drives (20, 40, 60, 80 gig, often six or seven years 
old) from recycled systems.