Toughbook recycling

A hearty THANK YOU for your recent knowledge sharing, as we just finished recycling more CF-28 toughbooks, with twelve TB moving from a life of fighting crime to that of teaching computer skills to kids at an orphanage in El Salvador.

Ten set up in a lab we built for the orphanage kids, two more traveling with nuns to computer training classes of their own, and one cf-50 in the baby wing.

We'll be setting up more as they become available, but this brings us to a total of thirteen in El Salvador, four in Haiti, three in the Dominican Republic, and two in Guatemala.

Funny how the kids could care less that it takes the computers 60 seconds to boot up, they're thrilled none the less.

Sam



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Very cool!! Thanks for you efforts and the contributors here.

Glen

 

what ever happened to that program one laptop per child. I liked that program. This reminds me of it.

 

Those laptops were so crappy that I think the kids would be better with no laptop at all...

 

Nice! Now bolt some legs on some broken toughbooks and give the kids a chair to sit on.

 

OK, you guys are killing me......

The chairs for the lab are in the library, serving double duty, but I like the thinking.

We finished everything but linking them to the Internet, as they reported they had cable access on my pre-deployment site visit, but upon arrival this time I found they only had dialup, and it was already shared four ways, so almost no bandwidth left.

I had initially planned to use the pre-existing cat5, add routers as I posted here, but also had a bunch of wireless stuff as well if I couldn’t get the line run. In the end, I couldn’t even connect in the office, in the fourth position on their router, when others were online.

So as soon as we find the dough, we'll spring for the labs own Internet connection, $39 US a month with a twelve month contract, and the net provider does all the wiring for free. Nothing is ever easy.

The nuns loved the lab, but the little kids were actually more impressed with the Epson digital projector and Samsung home theater system we set up as a Cinema in another area, though I must say Spongebob in Spanish is just not as funny.

Worst part, one of the babies, an 8 month old little boy in the baby wing died the night before we arrived. No idea why, just a little white casket arriving at the orphanage at the same time we did. I had tickled him to get him to smile for a picture two months ago, and now he’s gone, sad.

Again, thanks to the forum gurus for helping me get all these working.

 

*Says a prayer*

Of course being older and a parent, I can't help but be touched... especially with my own little ones being so little.

mnem
"Life gets more precious when there's less of it to waste..."

 

AWWWW!!! The inner softie comming out!

 

jeses C, this was an upbeat thread. Whats with the dying baby story? Thats frigin horrible. I know in deveolping countries the chances of death at an early age is alot higher so Iv heared. It only makes sence and is logical too though when you think about it. As for the 1 laptop per child, I remember seeing a video about it here. I remember thinking it seemed resonable though.

 

Jeffrey,

Not my intent to bring you down with the baby dying story, just illustrate the highs and lows of the trip.

Truth be told, every mission I’ve taken has been filled with pain and joy in near high def.

Marvin’s death, as sad as it was, pales in comparison to what I saw while working in Haiti last February; Guatemala last year or Kosovo in 1999.

The only constant is life is a cruel to the most vulnerable, so anything my guys can do to mitigate that fact is hugely important to us.

 

Yeah... it's hereditary. You get it from your kids.

It does seem that way... but thanks for doing it. Were you in Haiti during the mudslides? WOW... my reaction when I saw the news was "Like they don't have enough misery already?" and I was immediately thankful for my own good fortune. *Knocks on wood*

I hope once I return to the real world (I'm still in that perpetual hazy near dreamstate brought on by lack of sleep and 2 small children) I'll have the ambition to get back out there and set a good example for my kids the way you are.

mnem
Pay it forward...