[hblug] Computers with Ubuntu

[Daniel Faulknor]

Hi All,
Meeting before last i think, Perry bought up the idea of getting 
old(ish) computers donated by people, installing ubuntu on them, getting 
them working properly, then selling them, complete with a Keyboard, 
Monitor, Mouse and Cables etc.
I thought maybe it was time to start looking into this further (i now 
have a quite a bit of time on my hands, as its almost school holidays)

Anyway:

The General Plan, from what i remember at the meeting, and some other 
discussion.

We get older computers from people - Computer shops would be a likely 
place to go, also schools, as some schools (like my own) upgrade a 
classroom every 1 or 2 years, and they usually just have the computers 
sitting in some store room. Maybe setting up an agreement with the shops 
(and maybe schools) where they agree to give us any computers (including 
all the peripherals would be nice) they either: are never going to use, 
or are going to throw away.
Pretty much any computer would be of use to us. If they are too old to 
run a desktop (GUI), is it possible that we could think about firewalls? 
especially if someone is a dial up user, and we could sell them a 
firewall (they would probably have to supply the external modem) and a 
computer, and make sure that the computer is setup to run through the 
firewall.

We would install Ubuntu on the said machines, and configure them so they 
are ready for someone to use, this would probably include multimedia 
applications, email (Thunderbird isn't installed by default) and general 
applications that we think would be helpful to people.

I'm assuming that we would be extending the offer of giving support if 
something goes wrong, and maybe some basic user training (or we could 
include a startup guide of some description with all the computers?)

Also, not thinking too specifically about charging etc, we will 
probably(?) want to give certain amounts off if people don't want say, a 
monitor, or something(if they already have a spare of that thing at 
home). Also we will want to have the computers priced fairly cheaply as 
our aim is to get as many people as possible using Linux, and make it as 
easy as possible for them to do so.

I think thats about it for now, thats the general idea anyway, we can 
look into specifics at a later date.
Bring on the comments/criticisms etc :)

Daniel