Giving away PC's

[Danjns]

Hi Guys,

we're going to be giving away some old pc's to staff.

has anyone done this and got a formal letter already explaining things like 'no support' etc?

i dont want to leave anything out and make myself vulnerable.

Cheers

[tommccann]

letter or no letter you'l still get people asking why things arnt working, i got asked to install a home printer on a school laptop for a teacher and i told her i cant do it because it needs the printer to install it. Next day a printer was sitting on my desk!! cheeky these teachers!!

[TwoZeroAlpha]

Just some considerations which you may or may not have come up against.

1) HDD included - is it new or wiped. If so is your LEA happy with the data destruction method? I looked into doing this and the only way the LEA would ok it was with new HDDs

2) OS included? Again, for licencing purposes bundling with an OS was too much hassle, was going for xubuntu until the whole project got canned.

3) No support and sold as seen, otherwise it will be a real headache.

I'll try and dig out the letter we sent out originally. Good luck

^^^^^^
The above applies to selling old PCs to pupils and parents mostly, I've just re-read the OP.

We've sold a couple of laptops to staff. I've just wiped the data with DBAN, reinstalled XP (as it was shipped) and filled in an asset disposal form. Leave the rest to finance. I had a chat to the staff members saying once they paid ti was no longer a school pc and fell outside my realm of responsibility.

[SteveBentley]

Our policy is that old machines go to be recycled, period. Mainly due to liability in case somebody gets an electric shock or something. Of course, we never throw anything away that's worth having anyway!

[dalsoth]

You may also need to justify this to auditors. If they are good enough to be of use to staff then is the taxpayer not being short changed if you are giving them (maybe even using this excuse to steal them in their eyes) to staff? What if you were just doing this because you fancied a few yourself and thought this was a nice easy way to get a free pc or two? Obviously not the case but check if you have to justify it to someone other than the school bursar and head.

Just a thought.

[soveryapt]

No letter but a few other things to consider:

1. machine is given as is and no support will be given prior to or following collection of the machine
2. machine to be given with no installed software due to license restrictions
3. the school and/or staff cannot and will not be held responsible for any injury occurring through the use of this machine

re software, you could simply burn an Ubuntu CD which comes with a number of things for them, or if your machine was supplied with an OS license (one of those lovely OEM stickers on the casing) then you could (if you have the original disks and can be bothered) install the machine to it's original state, by which I mean no updates / no services packs etc and put something in along the lines of:

this machine is to be supplied in it's original software state. This includes only the software the manufacturer originally supplied with it and no updates.

Just some suggestions anyway, I'm sure there will be plenty more. I'm considering giving some of our old machines away at present so I've been thinking a little on it.

[nephilim]

We did this once, peeled off the stickers for the original machines, put new HDD's in, and sold as seen. No support is given, neither is OS or software, and no refunds were offered.

We had 6 members of staff who took them home only for the next day to come in complaining that they werent working, however our paperwork was air tight and that they would have to supply there own OS and if they wanted me to do it, it would cost them my full rate.

Its justified by the fact that we had a new suite built in replacement for the one that was being closed, auditors were happy with that reasoning.