Old PCs to be given to parents

[Trapper]

We have a couple of very old PCs - Celeron 800MHz - 256MB RAM etc which are currently sat in the school cellar awaiting Governors approval for scrappage.

 

We have some releativley less well off families with students are our school, all of whom are on the ASD spectrum.

 

I've floated an idea past my SLT that we could give a couple away to parents along with a CRT monitor instead of them going to be melted down for someone elses profit.

 

I just wanted to check the Windows licensing. Assuming they all still have a Windows 2000 OEM sticker on them, I believe we can send them out with Windows 2000 installed from one of our old media discs, as the Windows license sticks with the PC regardless of ownership?

 

We also bough Office licenses for the PC through the council, but I assume they have to stay for school use on school computers so I was going to whack on Open Office.

 

The parents would also need to buy a keyboard/mouse set as obviously all of those have been reclaimed and used elsewhere.

 

I was also thinking of putting together a document that they have to sign before taking ownership of a PC which basically states that the PC is theirs now. They cannot make a claim to the school if it breakdowns for repair or replacement. And when the PC does finally hit end of life its their responsibility to dispose of it not the schools. I mean obviously if they start to really play up and it just needs a once over I'll do it, but I am aware of the fact I could spend all my time up to (and beyond!) my dying days repairing these things.

 

Has anyone else done anything like this before? With the end of the Home Access Scheme we do have some families who just cant get hold of a PC.

[pete]

I think it's a bad idea to hand people underpowered* hardware - it'll end up on your doorstep. It's irresponsible to do so with an operating system that's end-of-life and no longer receiving security patches**. It's a worse idea to imply in any way, shape or form that you'll do repair work on them. If they're too manky for school use, they're probably too manky for someone to use as a home machine.

 

A better approach would be to work with SEN/Learning Support to see what the options are for cheap but reliable new kit. Our lot found a funding source from some initiative or other.

 

* And I say this as someone whose email and coffee laptop is a T23 with a P3 1.13 Ghz and 384MB of ram running a lightweight Linux distro (Crunchbang). It struggles with iPlayer.

**Please Verify your Location

Edited February 16, 2011 by pete

[maniac]

We considered giving old hardware to parents/students before when we disposed of our truckload of HP NC1100 tablet PCs we had. The general consensus was whatever you get them to sign, it will come back to haunt you in the long run so we donated them all to charity in the end.

[Trapper]

I think it's a bad idea to hand people underpowered* hardware

 

Underpowered is still better than nothing

 

It's irresponsible to do so with an operating system that's end-of-life and no longer receiving security patches**

 

That is a good point, but if there isn't a Win XP license on the machine we can't afford to stump up £80 to buy it, and Linux is not ready for barely IT literate folks.

 

A better approach would be to work with SEN/Learning Support to see what the options are for cheap but reliable new kit. Our lot found a funding source from some initiative or other.

 

Let me know the details. I assume this is a pot somewhere for the parents to get kit either via the school or local/central government. This would be a far better option, but no one I've spoken to knows about any further found after the last batch of Home Access laptops. Hence the recycle old kit idea.

[laserblazer]

We did the same a couple of years ao. I was dead set against it but the Bursar won. The new owners had to sign to say there was no support and I never heard of them again. Lord knows if anyone got any use out of them.

[kevin_lane]

Humm i see both sides and i do agree that it's good in helping people who are less well off. BUT! you must consider the other factors I my self as a network manager have to decide on things such as this and personally i wouldn't and i mean like Pete says why give them an O/s which is no longer supported by Microsoft and don't give out any updates / patch anything like that.

 

also you said you wouldn't mind giving it the one over well you have to decide you are either going to support it or not because If i was given a free PC and everything was ok for about a week. And it went wrong I would came back to you as you checked it over I would most prob want you to keep checking especially if the school gave it me for FREE.

 

yes admittedly you need to license this now if this is SEN why don't you speak with your SEN coordinator and

say look we have some PC but the only problem is we cant put windows on because we are only covered for our own PC is their a chance the LEA could help

or if the school don't mind buying the OEM software for windows 7 because dint forget windows XP is coming to end of life soon

Windows XP Support and End of Sales

Even though we ended the sale of Windows XP on October 22, 2010, we still plan to provide support for individual users and businesses until April 2014. For more information, see the Windows XP Help & How-to page. As Windows XP sales come to an end, it's also a good time to think about upgrading to Windows 7, which is designed to be compatible with many of the Windows XP programs you're accustomed to using.

what i would do is create a check list of all the items in the PC that have passed e.g network card / graphics card / sound / cdrom /dvd / etc and give it either a pass or a fail that way they know the faults but to be fair you want to make sure that everything pass as it will obs look alot better and just say at the bottom that they are agreeing to aceppt full responsibility for the PC and that school is no longer liable for the or attached to the school in any way

[sukh]

Hi

 

To give your old PC's away, you must make sure that the PC is licensed as follows.

 

1. The COA must exisit on the PC. This is the Genuine Windows Label you find on a PC with licenses details.

2. Also you must the original recovery disk which was provided when you purchased the PC or the Recevery Image which may have been installed on a recovery partition on a PC.

 

In this case you do NOT need to purchase a new PC.

 

Regards

Sukh