Ron Thomas
As we said in our last report We received 10 newer Pentium 3 computers from Georgia Pacific thanks to the efforts of Donna Talarski and the generosity of her employer.
We believe the setup of these computers is going to be key to teaching computer classes to our community. Also we can see folks meeting to play inter network games with one another. In other words “Fun & Games”. We have 4 volunteers that are happy to teach computers. We have some folks that are volunteering to put the lab together. We have one that may load many new features on to the computer.
However, we thought before we put the cart and the horse together we should really check and see if these computers work. So, today Jim Rose and I checked them all out. Here is our findings.
- 9 of the 10 computers work. One seems to have a power supply problem.
- All of the mice and keyboards work.
- Although we checked only some of the monitors we think they all work and are not concerned because we have other spare monitors.
- All of the computers are 4 years old
- All have Windows 98 as an operating system.
- All have only the basic windows program loaded but no other programs that cost money.
Phase 1
We would like to put 6 of them into what is called the card / craft room now. That is where the classes would be held. Another out in the main social area of the clubhouse. One where the exercise room is now. One in reserve or up for a drawing. The others now in use would be given away in a drawing to folks in our community. You should know that they are older models and are slow.
Management will of course have a say in their location. We also will be having to move the books in the craft room to another location if we proceed in this manner. You can see there are a lot of “ifs” here.
Jim Dodds has volunteered to load these computers with a newer operating system and maybe some programs but there may be some costs involved in that. We encourage Jim to send us what he thinks can be done and what it will take to get it done.
Cabinet builders in the park are encouraged to help so that our computer room has a place for everything and is neat.
This generally will be the completion of phase one of our project. At this point we can start having classes and club meetings on these computers.. While this is happening........
Phase two will take place with the forming of a new computer club in which newbies and old hands will be equally asked to join. The club will assume the project of getting the computers networked together and acquiring software for the club and community. They will also find a way to acquire a high speed internet connection that will be linked to all the computers whether by a wifi router or Ethernet cable or a combination of both. Once the computers are networked they can all go on the internet from just one connection and they can all do it at the same time.
Phase Three of this project calls for WiFi internet to be set up in this community. With wifi here residents would pay a greatly reduced fee (less than a quarter of what is currently being billed to residents of high speed internet from Charter). There are many technical and legal problems to overcome but the end result will give everyone access to the internet at a reasonable cost.
These projects can all be going on simultaneously or one at a time. We have broken them down so there isn’t such a big bite to chew at once.
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