User Feedback :: Thanks DSL for one great year..



docdtv -

Thank you for your feedback. I admit that some of the things you talk about are a little over my head.  :)

All I know is that people are throwing away good computers while kids go without. In this day and age, a kid without a computer is way behind the eightball. I couldn't take seeing this happen when I talked to teachers who told me about kids going without.

Currently, there is no cost associated with setup/repair of these machines. My storage and utilities for the storage are donated. I have a half dozen NFP's that use win98 eagerly waiting to try my Linux remaster. The MS program is not the greatest. The sad thing is that I didn't even learn about that program from MS. They insisted on trying to get me to purchase WinXP licenses since they would apply to Win98 installs!!

I am working with other NFP's to build alliances with recyclers that will help keep PC's out of the landfills and will give us a place to send the parts that need demanufacturing for little to no cost for us. So as you can see, my vision is alot larger than just refurbishing a few PC's.

With my remaster, and some notes on things such as soundcard chipsets, I can easily spin up a PC, format the HD and install an OS in 10 to 20 minutes. I think it's easier than installing Win98.

Support is an issue, but I am writing docs as I go. As I release my first few machines, I am getting feedback from the users to refine the howto's and the OS. Is this the easiest way to go...absolutely not. If it was easy, lots of people would be doing it. This is a spiritual journey for me. If I change the lives of a few kids, I will be successful but I believe it is destined to do much more. In my opinion, it is the right track. I would rather spend my time expanding my mind (and others) rather than worry about MS legal mumbojumbo. I can give these kids very usable PC's with a ton of programs and games that will make computing fun and educational. It is amazing what you can still do on a P133 with 32mb ram.

I am working on other things like low cost external modems and working with a local ink place to supply ink cartridges at a minimal charge. I have over 100 HP inkjet printers!!

Thanks for your interest. I am always interested in feedback...especially from the people in this forum.
Quote (clivesay @ Oct. 27 2004,23:07)
docdtv -

Thank you for your feedback. I admit that some of the things you talk about are a little over my head.  :)

All I know is that people are throwing away good computers while kids go without... My storage and utilities for the storage are donated. I have a half dozen NFP's that use win98 eagerly waiting to try my Linux remaster. The MS program is not the greatest. The sad thing is that I didn't even learn about that program from MS. They insisted on trying to get me to purchase WinXP licenses since they would apply to Win98 installs!!

I am working with other NFP's to build alliances with recyclers that will help keep PC's out of the landfills and will give us a place to send the parts that need demanufacturing for little to no cost for us. So as you can see, my vision is alot larger than just refurbishing a few PC's.

With my remaster, and some notes on things such as soundcard chipsets, I can easily spin up a PC, format the HD and install an OS in 10 to 20 minutes. I think it's easier than installing Win98.

Support is an issue, but I am writing docs as I go... I would rather spend my time expanding my mind (and others) rather than worry about MS legal mumbojumbo. I can give these kids very usable PC's with a ton of programs and games that will make computing fun and educational. It is amazing what you can still do on a P133 with 32mb ram.

I am working on other things like low cost external modems and working with a local ink place to supply ink cartridges at a minimal charge. I have over 100 HP inkjet printers!!

Thanks for your interest. I am always interested in feedback...especially from the people in this forum.

Hello again Chris,

I decided to look into what you are doing a bit more and discovered something you may have to face at one point:
http://www.computercorps.org/Legal/terms_and_conditions.htm says that "ComputerCorps" claims the phrase "No Computer Left Behind" as a trademark/servicemark and that "The use of any ComputerCorps trademark or service mark without our express written consent is strictly prohibited." I am not a lawyer and will say no more about this.

You may perhaps find of use some materials pertaining to PC refurbishing I've collected since reading your latest post. Find them here: http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/Technology/PCrecycle.htm As you observe, there are a number of efforts similar to yours: you are wise to share knowledge of "best methods" rather than "trying to reinvent the wheel".

I am of the opinion that perhaps the first thing to teach a new PC user is how to access a page on the World Wide Web. Once he can do that, he has access to BILLIONS of pages of material - including a vast computer-instruction bonanza!

At our local public library, we deploy Windows 98 and configure Internet Explorer in a particular way, so that our users can get started retrieving Web pages WITHOUT learning to use the mouse. (Sadly not ALL libraries near to us do this!) We provide a lesson on Web access at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/BHPL/WebLesson-OneHour.html on the use of these computers. You may find it helpful, too.

One nice thing about Microsoft Windows is the "Windows Key", which provides relief from using the mouse. All of us here may think mouse use is trivial, but I assure you it is a formidable barrier for many new users, particularly, in my experience, older people.

Another nice thing about Microsoft Windows is the ready availability of free low-latency text-to-speech engines. (cf. http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/BHPL/TTSlobby.htm ) The Linux world does not have anything like it yet.

Despite all these nice things said about Microsoft Windows, I do see great value in something like DSL. If you are given a mish-mash collection of PCs, no two alike, you DO have to install Windows on each machine using Microsoft's installation disk, and that can be very time-consuming. It is very true that booting DSL from a CD-ROM is much faster - **IF** it works.

But the point of my earlier post was that if you have a group of IDENTICAL PCs, you can prepare a CD-ROM from which an installation of Windows can be made as fast as one can copy data from the CD-ROM to the hard disk (e.g. well under 10 minutes, depending on what other stuff you bundle.) You don't even have to use any commercial software (other than Windows itself) to do this - Partition Image ( http://www.partimage.org/ ) does a decent job, albeit it is still pre-version 1.0.

But say you are persuaded that DSL is the way to go. What other advice might I offer you?

Be aware that the hard disk (or the bootable CD-ROM) is not the only place from which a PC gets its programming. A volatile adjunct to the (ROM) BIOS is the coin-cell-powered CMOS memory, which holds critical BIOS parameters. When your computer "wakes up", it looks at the BIOS first, before it can examine any CD or hard drive. Eventually, the cell ("battery") runs down and the CMOS memory discharges (it can take up to 15 minutes after the cell power is totally removed). DSL might work with a variety of CMOS settings, but maybe not the one that ensues when the cell power is depleted. Indeed, if DSL requires a particular set of CMOS settings to run (no surprise, I have found that true for at least one PC on which I have tried it), it is important to document those settings, that they may be restored when the cell runs down and needs to be replaced (a few dollars). Depletion of cell power is not the only way the CMOS parameters may change. A curious user may tap the key needed to elicit its alteration during the boot process and effect changes, to his great eventual dismay. That's another reason CMOS settings should be recorded for any PC you dispense with DSL installed.

Given how light-weight DSL is, there is something to be said for always booting it from a CD-ROM. If you give end-users root access, they can alter critical files on a hard disk in their naivitee, and time has to be wasted "diagnosing" and "fixing". Support work is far more trivial when the support person knows one booted from the CD-ROM. (Maybe it would be wisest to just keep root away from end-users, but sometimes that makes things harder to do than I personally happen to enjoy.)

If you go with CD-ROM booting, I suggest that your remaster symbolically link /home/dsl/filetool.lst to a floppy-based copy. (I'm assuming that will work.) In this way, you can provide everyone with an identical CD-ROM and put any customization on an easily-altered, cheap floppy disk. You can even archive a virtual copy of said floppy upon dispensing a PC, that you might offer the end-user a replacement in the event of disaster.

Of course, CD-booting means you can even ship a PC for which there is no hard disk. (cf. Lindows/Linspire Webstation http://www.linspire.com/lindows_news_pressreleases_archives.php?id=58 ) Users can use floppy disks, USB flash drives, or even Internet-based archives to store their data.

If, on the other hand, you want to do a hard-disk installation, I suggest you bundle an installation/restoration CD-ROM of the type I described for Microsoft Windows above. If the hard disk gets corrupted but is still functional, it will only take minutes to put it back into the condition it was when you customized and dispensed it.

Good luck with your project, Chris, and keep us updated on how DSL helps you carry it out!
Quote
Another nice thing about Microsoft Windows is the ready availability of free low-latency text-to-speech engines. (cf. http://www.rootsweb.com/~gahchs/BHPL/TTSlobby.htm ) The Linux world does not have anything like it yet.


I will  soon be releasing the excellent "festival" text to speech program as a .dsl
It works well as a standalone speech , but it also can be integrated with quite a few programs,
many of which I have already made available in the repository.
I will also look into making the tkfestival gui for it as well, since there seems to be some interest...

Here are some links to give you more details ..

www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/download.html
festvox.org/festival/
linux-sound.org/speech.html

73
ke4nt
Wow!! Thank for taking the time. Alot to think about.

Quote
http://www.computercorps.org/Legal/terms_and_conditions.htm says that "ComputerCorps" claims the phrase "No Computer Left Behind" as a trademark/servicemark and that "The use of any ComputerCorps trademark or service mark without our express written consent is strictly prohibited." I am not a lawyer and will say no more about this.


Interesting. My company is officially "No Computer Left Behind, Incorporated". With state NFP designation and federal pending.....I will forward this to my attorney.

Yeah, I am guessing I don't have this thing mastered by any means.  :) The way I see it, no one has come out with a good way to do this. If it was out there, it would be widely used. I live in a city of around 13,000 and I am getting the idea that the number of kids without PC's is in the high hundreds.

I do not want to reinvent the wheel but I have some definite ideas I want to explore. I feel that I have absolutely nothing to lose.I am going to go for it with Linux and see what happens. If it fails all the MS IT guys can tell me "told you so". Most of the one's I talk to think I am crazy anyway. I believe that people underestimate kids. My 5yr old twins are playing tuxpaint, gcompris and circus linux on one of my remasters on a P75 with 48mb ram. They hardly ever ask me a question. They even break out tetris once in awhile!

Thanks again for all the info....I am reading with great interest!

Take care

Chris
BTW - I have thought about doing pm or frugal installs on the machines. Still not sure about that one.......

Chris
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