Computers Given Away

Rich - 22 Jul 2004

With the temporary demise of the computer courses at the ECC, the lab has had quite a few computers waiting to get refurbished, fixed up and given away, some volunteers have been busy making them work again.

The last couple of weeks we have been giving away some to local people who can plead a good case - local artists, single parents and the people Rich has met down the Pub that are digitally challenged! :)

We install the Debian-based Mephis operating system. We set up the machines with a KDE Desktop environment; this is one of the easiest desktops to get used to. Mepis provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to configure the system and it works very well on the 450MHz mechines with 128MHz ram, including Open Office, the Mozilla Browser Suite and the Gimp (professional graphics package). We are still unable to supply wireless cards, but they do have configured network cards so, if the recipient is in range of a signal, then they can buy an access point and hook it up to that.

If you know of anyone working on a project that needs a computer for home or work, contact us and we may be able to help.

We still have more machines and anybody who wants to try working with Linux should contact the lab to arrange a time when they can collect one and have some familiarisation training. We are donating a public access machine to the Cube Cinema; this will help promote the Bristol Wireless project.