[kwlug-disc] Thanks for helping to repair laptops!

[Paul Nijjar]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 01:56:59AM -0500, B.S. wrote:
> 
> Is there a facility or (social) program for this we could point
> people to, or is there any intent to 'supply' such a program? [I get
> you can't supply what you don't have / working, and no such
> qualification is needed when walking in off the street to purchase
> from CR.]

There is no such social program. For now people can come into CR. If
the laptops do not sell in CR we might need to do further outreach. 

People are welcome to let others know that these laptops are
available, but it is important not to raise expectations too high.
They are not that good, and they are sold as-is. Some people might
really benefit from them, and many others (especially those with poor
computer skills) probably won't. This is part of the tension that
inhibited us from making laptops available, since CR primarily serves
those who have poor computer skills. 

> I'm guessing you're loading up lubuntu or xubuntu for the user? (Let
> alone needing a platform to run hardware exercises on.)

Xubuntu 14.04

> It's been my experience Mondays don't work well for meetings -
> people recovering or catching up from the weekend, or prepping or
> completing for workweek what they intended to do on weekend. 

This raises the question of whether KWLUG should be held Monday
nights, which I will tactfully avoid bringing up because I kind of
don't want to open that can of worms. On the other hand several other
groups meet Mondays, such as DevHouse, WWITPro, and HackerNest.

> Can you characterize the CPUs of the laptops please?

Of the laptops we have prepared, the oldest is a Pentium III 900MHz, I
think, and the best are Pentium M 2GHz or so. There will eventually be
a few Core 2 Duo systems available, but there are none in this batch
(and may not be any for a while). Anything better is scarce and tends
to be hoarded for internal Working Centre use.

The standard amount of RAM is 512MiB. A few laptops have a little more
(up to 1GiB, I think). 

The better laptops can do Youtube without jerkiness. The Pentium IIIs
cannot do Youtube at all, which means we are probably not going to
spend time trying to fix Pentium IIIs in the future.

These laptops are suitable for playing with, but probably should not
be trusted for critical work. None of the laptops will come with any
kind of warranty at all, because we have little capacity to fix
hardware problems.

- Paul 

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org