> Over the past couple of months there have been a few announcements from > companies touting 'simple' PC's for the elderly and those with no > previous experience of computers. The latest of these is called Alex, > from a business named The Broadband Computing Company. > > I spent a bit of time looking at their offering today and, quite > frankly, I'm less than impressed. The basic laptop provided costs > £399.52. This provides a basic set of apps for web access, photo > management, office suite, contacts, etc., wrapped up in a Janet & John > GUI. On top of this, users have to pay an additional £9.99 per month for > support, an email address and on-line backup storage. That makes the > first year outlay just short of £520 - and that's before you add in the > cost of broadband provision. An alternative way to get the package is by > a monthly subscription of £39.95 on a two year minimum contract - that's > £958.80 in total, which is pretty outrageous in my book. > > So I started to look at what sort of a set-up might be provided for > considerably less outlay. The target I set myself was £250. The one > thing I omitted from my costings was support. > > So far, the best deal I have come up with is the following: > > Acer Aspire R3600 Desktop PC Intel Atom N230 > 1GB RAM > 160GB HD > Wireless keyboard & mouse > GeForce 9400 graphics card > £149.99 > > +19" widescreen monitor £90 > > Total price £239.99
I make it £215 if you order from Ebuyer (max 1 per person) with a Compaq 18.5" monitor with built-in speakers. > Add to this something like Ubuntu and the Eldy interface (www.eldy.eu) > and you've got something pretty close to the system mentioned above, but > at less than half the price. > > OK, so someone still has to put the thing together and show people how > to use it, but as a community project aimed at the elderly or low-income > families, this could be done by volunteers (LUG project?). > > So what I'm wondering is this: Is the idea feasible? Can it be done for > even less money? Is there a better way to do it? > > There's something to think about! I believe Eldy already has its own support community. Valerie Singleton's simplicITy also provides PCs with Eldy installed but at a similar price to Alex. Do you think it's to pay for her celebrity endorsement fees? *snort* Malc -- Technical copy-editor & proofreader KDE Proofreading Team KDE British English Translation Team http://l10n.kde.org/team-infos.php?teamcode=en_GB Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FriendlyAtheist Sicherer, schneller und einfacher. Die aktuellen Internet-Browser - jetzt kostenlos herunterladen! http://portal.gmx.net/de/go/atbrowser _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list Peterboro@mailman.lug.org.uk https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
