Consider doing this for Christmas. Or any time.

I fix computers.

Recently, someone gave me a Dell desktop system they no longer wanted. Sadly, the processor was bad. Luckily, it took an old 1.6GHz Pentium4, of the correct core revision, that I had here. It booted right up.

So I cleaned it up, inside and out, cleaned and tweaked the WindowsXP that was on there, added security software and got it running well. It was nice: had both WordPerfect and Word on it.

Now, what to do with it?

I called the local rape crisis and domestic abuse center. I knew that a computer can be a powerful tool to help women coming out of bad situations re-mainstream, especially when it comes to a job search. After a week, they found it a home. An aside: Being a guy and dealing with women from a domestic abuse and rape crisis center can be a little bit on the weird side. Let us say that I found an endemic and institutionalized wariness and distrust of males. I also find that quite understandable. Illustration: I was told to goto the center's office which is right across the street from me, to drop something off. They would not open the door for me. I had to talk to someone through the glass and push some materials through a mail slot. As I said, it is still understandable, but if you are a guy, be forewarned.

If, in this holiday season, you find yourself sitting on old computer stuff, please call up your local social services agency and see if they have service consumers who could benefit from your donation of that working computer stuff. You could be making a huge difference in someone's life and giving them a powerful tool in their recovery from bad and hard times.

On edit: I will be doing this sort of thing again, when I get a working or repairable system. I will also be using a Linux distro, where appropriate, as a replacement OS. Saves money.

A thousand recommends.

I wonder if any of the lurking assholes will note this.

Nah. They only like ugly.

I'm sure you made a difference in someone's life with that gift.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

K & R

I'm upgrading my computer soon.....will check the Woman's Care Cottage by my house, I'm sure someone could use my old one.

Great idea!

When you talk to them, tell them if they cannot use it, would they please refer you to a local social services agency that might be able to use it and get it to a consumer. The agencies talk amongst themselves and this is an effective way to get it into needful hands. Rape and abuse, Mental health, welfare, cancer and chronic disease...all worthy recipents. And there are others.

...still need to erase the hard drives on them - securely. They have old data on them (mine and others'). Then they can be reloaded. Ubuntu would be great for these, along with OpenOffice or some such, Firefox and Thunderbird.

We have a DV shelter here, and some other orgs that could certainly use them.

Good idea.

Get on the blower and let them know you are ready to make some Christmases just that little better.

Ubuntu would be great as would Mandriva 2008.

As for wiping them, the install process will do that when you format them.

...I know an OS install will format the drives/partitions, but I want them *securely* wiped as in DoD securely wiped. :)

Any utilities you can recommend for that?

:)

Yup. Eraser. http://sourceforge.net/projects/eraser/

...like Killdisk:

http://killdisk.com/erasedata.htm

I'll probably end up using that.

Will do up to a Guttman-grade 35-pass wipe and overwrite with random data.

kids (quite grown) "stuff" from our house...silver or furniture or such and I try to find some family remembrance to frame for them. Almost all my other gifts are donations in my friends' and family's names to animal organizations. Donations are important in my book. This keeps me out of the rat race and I always feel gratified that I helped in a small way.

kids (quite grown) "stuff" from our house...silver or furniture or such and I try to find some family remembrance to frame for them. Almost all my other gifts are donations in my friends' and family's names to animal organizations. Donations are important in my book. This keeps me out of the rat race and I always feel gratified that I helped in a small way.

Ours is always willing to take used computers and parts, I hope everybody else's has a good computer center in theirs.

We are a community of about 6,000 residents, mostly retired, have lots of interest clubs and do lots of volunteer work. One of the guys in our computer club started this project.

I love it when the geekishly-inclined use their powers for good. ;-)

And no one should feel too bad about the way the center dealt with you when you dropped off your donation. They have to take some pretty extreme cautionary measures to ensure the safety of their residents. They might well have been just as distant with a woman. When you think about it, they have no way of knowing whether any donation is merely being used as a Trojan horse to help some angry male (say, a buddy of yours) figure out where his wife/girlfriend is so he can forcibly drag her back home...or even pay the shelter a visit with gun in hand.

Any time they even identify their office location to someone, it must feel risky. But that shouldn't stop anyone from donating to them. Especially this time of year...by the time Christmas rolls around, some moms and kids will have found themselves stuck spending the holiday in one of those shelters. Donations can help make sure the kids still get gifts.

Going into this I told them I have social service work experience, understood their HIPAA obligations and need for security and would be willing to sign confidentiality papers. So when it happened, I knew instinctively what was up. I was not offended in the least.

I donate all my old clothes, sheets, etc to the local Women's Shelter. They actually have a separate office where you do that, so that the actual shelter location remains secret. My dad has done a ton of donations to them as well and never had a problem.

Their separate office, not their shelter.

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I've got a few old systems around here somewhere.

One must be truly in a "service" frame of mind. It CANNOT be 'about you.' It's certainly not something I'd recommend for all males, but for those with some decent comprehension of ego-less service to others in need, it's a profound personal growth experience. As a fairly large, intimidating-looking male with pronounced features, I learned a LOT.

... and you meet some truly heroic people.