We welcome Jettisoned / Old / Unused PCs
Hello all
I represent a company called Bluescreen. Our company is a student project whose aim is to create solutions on Debian for educational and SME environments. In practice, we export refurbished PCs installed with Debian or Ubuntu into Kenya, where the PCs will be used in schools, churches, healthcare centres, libraries, internet cafés, etc. Some computers are bought for private use.
Our long-term plan is to establish production in Nairobi, Kenya - manufacturing affordable PC sets and giving Debian/(compatible)/Linux support for other manufacturers and the local enterprise. We are planning to focus on making laptops and livingroom-fitting PC sets for home and office use. Equipped with Debian and/or "Debian custom distribution". Beyond the event horizon, we could also tailor Debian on embedded devices, such as ARM and MIPS -based boards.
We are three students and an entrepreneur, based in Finland (students) and Kenya (sponsored by http://www.cyberkenya.com ).
I'd like to address that in coming years, unused PC's are becoming a problem in volume. PC's dumped by the enterprise and the goverment most usually are still applicable in office work, and we all know that with Debian, their life can be extended by years. The EU regulations however demand that manufacturers themselves must organize a way to dispose jettisoned equipment of their label. Nevertheless, the fast-growing volume of total sales and upgrades of PC equipment demands a lot of capacity building for electronics recycling, and subjectively i'm afraid that the EU directives concerning disposal of old equipment cannot be met through traditional means of recycling electronics.
In countries like Kenya, there's a surprisingly large demand for ICT infrastructure. The country is booming with small businesses that tailor computers for other small companies, and a few consulting firms that maintain banks' and insurance companies' systems nationwide. Buildup of ICT infrastructure and local ICT production is seen as a way out of poverty - and open source production model is seen as a way to become independent from the colonial setting, in terms of IP. By production of affordable, Debian/Linux/FOSS -powered infrastructure, we attempt to answer this demand as sustainably as possible.
Secondhand computers have formed to become an affordable way to build computer classes, internet cafes and home offices in student dorms... price is a factor.
Until more affordable PC sets become available in Kenya, secondhand PC's serve the demand of the ICTs among the grand public.
We welcome all jettisoned PC's above the power of Pentium 2 333 Mhz and 64 MB RAM (preferrably P3's) in our Finnish address:
Perjalantie 8 as 21
11100 Riihimäki
FINLAND
(address is going to be updated soon)
We clean up the hard drives by zero-filling them.
Best regards
Tuomas Santakallio
and the team of Bluescreen
Making a better, more "open" world
One of the applications where we WILL implement Debian -powered secondhand PC's: Community Multimedia Centres. Funding for the centres comes from local NGOs and churches. Some Internet cafés have shown interest in transforming into Community Multimedia centres with a broades palette of services.
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1263&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Some of our partner organizations:
http://kilinux.org
http://www.schoolnetafrica.net
http://www.cyberkenya.com
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