hardware recycling

[David J Patrick]

On 9/12/06, Paul Nash <paul-fQIO8zZcxYtFkWKT+BUv2w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> >! The folks in Haiti (or Rwanda, or Chile,
> >or) would ROCK with a network made outta dat !
>
> Umm, I hate to burst your bubble, but ...
>
> I come from South Africa, and have done a lot of work in underdeveloped
> areas there and in the rest of Africa.  People there do not appreciate
> being used as a dumping ground for useless junk ("here, Windows '95 is good
> enough for your needs").

I recently blogged about a local school teacher who went to Nigeria,
this summer, to help out with the schools there. They were using 286s
and their "big gun" was a 386 ! for their "computer class, the
students had a sheet of paper with a computer keyboard printed on it !
linuxcaffe, when we first opened, was running (smoothly !) using all
PIIs, and although we were lucky enough to be able to upgrade past
these humble boxes, I know from experience that this level of
technology is far from junk.
I don't believe that this scholl in Nigeria would see a fleet of PIIs
and a P4 host, all configured with the latest and greates linux, would
be seen as "dumping". A single PII laptop would have revolutionized
the entire operation, and here in toronto, you could pick one up at a
garage sale for $30.
I, for one, do not think that efforts to revitilize and deploy our
"junk" computers, in less fortunate parts of the world, would be taken
as an insult.
djp

PS. bubble not yet bursted
-- 
djp-tnsZcVQxgqO2dHQpreyxbg at public.gmane.org
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