Karen Lofstrom <lofstrom@lava.net> writes:
On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Steve Thomas wrote:
[I can't believe that people still think they're doing good by shipping old 486's to Africa -- but apparently its true. I recently donated some old Pentium II's to a charity, and they couldn't believe their luck.]
My Linux users group installs thin client computer labs for schools. We happily accept PIIs, but turn down 486s. We use PIIs and PIIIs as thin clients, removing the hard drives and installing bootable NIC cards, and connect them to a fast server running K12LTSP Linux. We can create a usable 30 client computer lab for $3000 or so, since the clients are all donations.
I can't speak for Africa, but I have spent the last 14 years living in the deepest parts of China, Laos, and Cambodia. In the last 7 years I have not seen anything older than a PII except in a few old government systems and ancient bank computer networks running OS/2. And I'm not talking about the big cities like Vientiene, I'm talking about villages which barely have electricity and other odd corners with flakey old generators grumbling in blackend soot covered back sheds. Just because the electricity is only on for a few hours a day doesn't mean that people don't have access to okay technology. Hell, I've seen rice farmers along the Mekong River using picture phones to send pictures of babies to relatives in Bangkok. The third world ain't always as backward as people in the first world think. There are large areas that are that bad, but then ebooks will not be an option for them until they have bridges connecting them to settled areas, or proper water, bottled gas for cooking.... b/ -- Brad Collins <brad@chenla.org>, Bangkok, Thailand