Bluescreen welcomes Jettisoned / Old / Unused PCs

Hello all

I represent a company called Bluescreen. Our company is a student project
whose aim is to create solutions on Debian for educational and SME
environments. In practice, we export refurbished PCs installed with Debian or
Ubuntu into Kenya, where the PCs will be used in schools, churches,
healthcare centres, libraries, internet cafés, etc. Some computers are bought
for private use. 

Our long-term plan is to establish production in Nairobi, Kenya -
manufacturing affordable PC sets and giving Debian/(compatible)/Linux support
for other manufacturers and the local enterprise. We are planning to focus on
making laptops and livingroom-fitting PC sets for home and office use.
Equipped with Debian and/or "Debian custom distribution". Beyond the event
horizon, we could also tailor Debian on embedded devices, such as ARM and
MIPS -based boards.

We are three students and an entrepreneur, based in Finland (students) and
Kenya (sponsored by http://www.cyberkenya.com ).

I'd like to address that in coming years, unused PC's are becoming a problem
in volume. PC's dumped by the enterprise and the goverment most usually are
still applicable in office work, and we all know that with Debian, their life
can be extended by years. The EU regulations however demand that
manufacturers themselves must organize a way to dispose jettisoned equipment
of their label. Nevertheless, the fast-growing volume of total sales and
upgrades of PC equipment demands a lot of capacity building for electronics
recycling, and subjectively i'm afraid that the EU directives concerning
disposal of old equipment cannot be met through traditional means of
recycling electronics.

In countries like Kenya, there's a surprisingly large demand for ICT
infrastructure. The country is booming with small businesses that tailor
computers for other small companies, and a few consulting firms that maintain
banks' and insurance companies' systems nationwide. Buildup of ICT
infrastructure and local ICT production is seen as a way out of poverty - and
open source production model is seen as a way to become independent from the
colonial setting, in terms of IP. By production of affordable,
Debian/Linux/FOSS -powered infrastructure, we attempt to answer this demand
as sustainably as possible.

Secondhand computers have formed to become an affordable way to build
computer classes, internet cafes and home offices in student dorms... price
is a factor.

Until more affordable PC sets become available in Kenya, secondhand PC's
serve the demand of the ICTs among the grand public.

We welcome all jettisoned PC's above the power of Pentium 2 333 Mhz and 64 MB
RAM (preferrably P3's) in our Finnish address:
Perjalantie 8 as 21
11100 Riihimäki
FINLAND
(address is going to be updated soon)

We clean up the hard drives by zero-filling them.

Best regards

Tuomas Santakallio
and the team of Bluescreen

Making a better, more "open" world


One of the applications where we WILL implement Debian -powered secondhand
PC's: Community Multimedia Centres. Funding for the centres comes from local
NGOs and churches. Some Internet cafés have shown interest in transforming
into Community Multimedia centres with a broades palette of services.

http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1263&URL...


Some of our partner organizations:
http://kilinux.org
http://www.schoolnetafrica.net
http://www.cyberkenya.com


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