18 May
1999
18 May
'99
8:48 a.m.
Let's face it, there are more things out there of
one thing (Mac's for
instance) than can possibly be saved. Unless there is a person or group
of people who is willing and able to take those machines and do something
useful with them rather than having them sit in a garage, they may as well
not keep taking up space.
There is a HUGE demand for cheap old computers, BUT only as working systems
with the training to get people started. I met a teacher yesterday that as
a hobby finds old macs and assembles them into complete systems (for him no
modem, but Mac and printer, essentially a word processor) and passes them
on to students at his cost. He does a dozen or more systems per year, which
is a fairly high percentage of his students.
This is NOT a question of end user demand, but of middleman logistics. An
idea I have rolled around, that I think could be fairly successfull is the
$99 computer store. Other than all the details of a business, what I worry
about would be how to get sufficient supplies of older computers, and keep
costs low enough.