Our Toughbook Statistics

I was doing some analysis yesterday in preparation for our foundations annual report, and wanted to share a few details with you guys, since many of you have been helping me since I was diagnosed with the Toughbook disease.

In the last 14 months, we've put 63 Toughbooks in the slums of ten countries, at orphanages, after school programs, and a pediatric hospital to name a few. This includes a young autistic boy at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic, who a month ago got his own cf-28, and to the amazement of his caretakers, now likes doing his lessons.

I calculated the initial acquisition costs to the governmental entities that owned them first to be approximately $228,000; long before we bought them on EBay or a government auction.

Our costs to buy the surplus laptops and prepare them for the field ran approximately $14,000, though the actual retail or residual value when we delivered them was roughly $19,000.

However, the cost to the recipients was ZERO, and the value to the kids who are using them, priceless.

Add to that, we currently have in the warehouse another 20 cf-29’s to go, 12 or 13 cf-28’s to go, and 16 cf-18’s to go, and this “computers for orphans” thing is doing well.

So to all of you who have contributed parts, knowledge or direct support to our project since we started it, please give yourself a collective round of applause, along with my heartfelt thanks. You have made a difference, and I shared the proof with God earlier today.

Sam

 

Sam...I must say guys like you make this world a better place...keep up the good work. If anyone is wondering what Sam is talking about please check out his web site Orphan Logistics & Relief

 

Incredible project, mate. Keep it up.

*applause*

 

I took a look at the website and while I see that you are authorized to reinstall M$, have you ever considered using a Linux OS? I'm just thinking that it might work better long term than M$ because of all the registry issues M$ develops over time. There's an organization called Free Geek that refurbishes donated computers with nothing but freeware and uses various flavors of Linux. Unfortunately the closest chapter is in Orlando, but maybe they would come to you and do some training or vice versa... Just a thought, keep up the great work! =D

 

Thanks guys,

TWOCENTS: Your right on target, as some of the members here suggested I look at alternative operating systems almost a year ago.

Well, someone here, who will remain nameless so he wont blush, sent me an unsolicited Ubuntu install CD shortly there after, and I was shocked at how nice the interface was. Long story short, after I ran out of MS licenses, I revisited Ubuntu, and used it for the last six laptops that were carried down.

The ability to install in one language, and then convert to another on the fly is huge, as I dont have to learn all the spoken languages of the countries we work with. The other problem is the MS refurbisher program has upgraded us to Win7, which wasnt designed for the older toughbooks we usually get.

I stocked up on a nice collection of factory recovery disks for most of the models we work with, but then they're in english, and ours need mainly spanish.

It's never easy....

However this week, I won on a cheap government auction and came out with 16 laptops, including six working mrk2 cf-18s, with all the parts and three vehicle docks. In one of the laptop bags I found a set of unopened factory disks and one unopened Windows tablet XP disk set.

Not a bad score...............

 

Keep up the mighty work Bud..

 

Glad to hear Linux is working well for you! I wonder if you could find local support from local users? I'd think near or in larger cities that might be possible...?

 

Kudos for what you are doing, making the world a better place one Toughbook at a time.