[Nolug] boat anchor laptops

After reading Petri's thread, I wonder how many ancient laptops are still out
there, gathering dust? I brought a Toshiba Satellite 4025 CDT to Haiti with
me, which I maxed out on RAM a while back (it packs a whopping 160MB, all
told). Debian works nicely, I've even got KDE 3.x on it, which doesn't bog
down the machine too bad. Also the wireless works fine (I finally got WPA2
sorted out, via kwlan).

But about those boat anchors... I've been asked to scrounge old laptops for a
couple of schools down in Haiti. I do not want to give them anything a sane
person would consider "fast"... if you've got it, and it's worth anything at
all, don't consider donating it to the cause.

Anyhow, the schools (pix to follow) cater to very poor kids who cannot
otherwise afford to attend school. There is no public education in Haiti, with
the possible exception of a model school or two run by the government. A good
school costs $600 per year per pupil, but the schools I'm talking about charge
a hundred bucks per year, with the expectation that few parents will pay
anywhere close to that... but the ones that do pay anything at all have the
chance to say that they helped put their kids through school.

To give you an idea of the economics of the country, one guy I met is an
accountant, and he makes a decent living... $200 per month.

Please note, I don't want old PCs... there are other uses for those, I'm sure.
I can pack a couple of laptops under my arms, but desktops are impossible to
bring with me on an airplane.

-- 
Joey Kelly
< Minister of the Gospel | Linux Consultant >
http://joeykelly.net
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