Forest BB

Standard Life offer the following services to charities:

Giving In Kind

PCs, Equipment & Furniture
We donate lots of computers to schools, charities and community organisations all over the UK. Would you like to apply for a pc, or need more information? Then please e-mail us.


Company Facilities
We are pleased to welcome charities and community groups into our buildings for the purpose of holding meetings or small training events. However, our rooms are used regularly by our staff, so you need to check out availability well in advance. Standard Life makes no charge for this service. Would you like to use one of our rooms, or do you need more information? Then please e-mail us.


Design, Print and Copying
Over 250 charities, voluntary organisations and community groups throughout the UK have benefited from our printing, copying and design services. Priority is given to those with limited resources and whose publication will be of direct practical benefit to the community and reaches as wide an audience as possible. We cost each job to help us decide whether or not to do the job.

If you would like us to help your organisation or you need more info, then e-mail us.

The email address is:
community_investment@standardlife.com

I knew there had to be an upside to being a corporate wage slave.

G x

Good.... as long as they don't mind that we already lost their laptop!

Has anyone applied for this yet.
I think we go with something like this
We are a community arts charity who provide free and accessible facilities for local people interested in the arts. Also we are part of the EVS programme which means we help forge cross cultural exchanges. Currently we are trying to set up a digital workspace with computers that are open to be used the community and our volunteers.
Our wish list would be for Two higher end stations with scanners for the purpose of teaching and producing art work and designs . Three machines which would be used for research and two to four laptops that could be loaned out for free to people needing to work on projects at home.
As i say this is our wish list and any help you could give us towards this dream would be greatly appreciated.

Please feel free to add to this or amend it in anyway, lets try to send this off soon and see what they come back with

I thought you were going to do it Stephen?

Wasn't that what we agreed a few weeks ago when you kept suggesting it to me?

_________________
Mike

Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...

look mike i am asking peoples opinions on this letter and how to word it better, i said i would do it because no one else seemed to think it was worth bothering to ask for free computers. but as you can see my spelling and grammar are pretty bad. If this letter sounds fine to all then we can go ahead and send it and see what they say.

post the letter it sounds great!

here is a zip of letterheads and logos if you want any of that.

Hey,

I've not been able to go through the computers that are in the office yet to see if any of them can be fixed and used, but even if they can it can't hurt to have a spare or even a better one from SL. Here are my suggested guidelines for what computers we are interested in:

It must be able to run Ubuntu well. This means 1GHz processor and 512MB RAM, but that's an absolute minimum. Ideally (and really, for an office PC that the admins are gonna have to use every day) we'd want it to be closer to 2GHz+ processor and 1GB RAM.

It must be working. If the person donating us a computer can vouch that it is working that's okay. But if they don't know or they say it's not working then we don't want it. I don't think we want to collect broken computers for parts, unless we're going to have a space for it and a system like I outlined elsewhere. Also if you find one on the street then take it home and test if first, before bringing it into the forest.

It must have a working power supply. I know that you can buy replacement power supplies or take one out of another computer, but I think replacing power supplies is dodgy. There seems to be a big difference between a shit power supply that will fail and a good one that will last. A bad power supply can damage other parts of the computer. Also if the computer has no power supply then we can't turn it one to see if it works, until we get a replacement power supply for it. I think we want computers that come with their own reliable power supply.

It must have memory. Without memory we should at least be able to turn on the computer and see if it POSTs okay, but replacing memory is a pain because you've got to seek out the right kind of memory for the motherboard in question. Personally, I'm not able to identify memory sticks with my eyes, so taking memory sticks out of old computers and putting them in a new one would be kind of a pain.

It's okay if it doesn't have a hard drive. Without a hard drive we can still turn the computer on, see if it POSTs, and boot a live CD or USB to run Ubuntu's system tests and memtest and cpuburn. Hard drives are simple and easy to replace.

Also, we can easily supply monitors, keyboard and mice etc.

_________________
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

err.. are you sure?

we have a lot of CRT Massive Bastard monitors and a few wee ones, but no USB keybords or mice. some PS/2 keyboards... a PS/2 mouse...

Yeah, we need keyboards and mice.

Also, both the black machines in the action room seem to be fucked again. I spent ages fixing these up and getting them working. Dunno what's wrong with the one closest to the door, the other one seemed to break after someone *cough*milk*cough* changed some of the monitor settings. This may be fixable. More news soon if I decide I can be bothered to waste my time only for things to get broken after a few days.

_________________
Mike

Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...

Keyboards and mice are cheap and easy to get. If someone is offering a decent, working computer we obviously aren't going to turn it down because it doesn't come with keyboard and mouse!



I know what you mean. Not that I've been fixing any computers lately, but I don't want to fix the computers in the action room because several times in the last few years people have put in the effort to fix them all up, find donated PCs and set them up, we even bought new PCs, and every time they all end up broken not much later.

_________________
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

Here's a thought.

Big companies are all very keen on having a good Corporate Social Responsibility profile and there is a chance that other Edinburgh based companies may operate similar schemes to Standard Life.
It might be worth approaching RBS and Scottish Widows to see if they donate computer equipment to charities.

Is this something that should fall under the remit of the admins, aren't they always looking for more things to do?

hah, fuck off mike

the reason those copters get broken is because lazy people pull the cases forward to insert usb drives, then said cases get kicked, etc.

_________________
hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

It was because of this that I got some USB extension cables. They were somewhere hidden in the bottom drawer of the big filing cabinet. It would only work if the boxes were boxed in, and the USB extension cables couldn't be removed. It is pretty depressing.

If we ever bought PCs for the action room again (and I'm not saying we should) maybe we should go for something like the Fit-PC:



They're tiny desktop PCs. They take up no floor or desk space. You can get brackets for them be that they can be screwed to the back of a monitor, the underside of a desk, etc. Somewhere out of the way where they won't be kicked or spilled on. They won't get moved or stolen because they're screwed in. We won't have problems with people removing the memory, disc drives etc from them because I think it's pretty much all fixed on one board except the hard drive. They use less energy than an energy saving light bulb so we won't need to turn them off. I think they're fanless and silent too, bonus. They are more expensive than a desktop PC of the same spec though, but getting four of them wouldn't cost us any more than we spent on the four black PCs for the action room a while ago. I don't know how long they last, they must come with tiny notebook hard drives that I'm suspicious of, but their hard drives are easy to replace.

On the other hand, given the level of computer breakage in the action room maybe it's not worth spending money on and we should just put donated PCs from SL etc. in there if we get any.

_________________
I've had it with you. If I had an image of a laser gun I would absolutely position it right here in my hand...
Ha! I have a real laser absolutely positioned in my hand!

I always wanted to box them in with ply and attach the usb extensions.
I was told not to.
please tell me to and I will build boxes.