Device Donation Project - Redbourn

As the requests for laptops from local schools has dwindled, I haven't been posting much here.

However, I have now set up a business to provide tech support to local people and businesses. As part of my launch, I am offering a Laptop Rebuild service for all those laptops that were maybe too good to donate but are feeling slow and sluggish now. Please checkout and follow my business page for details and upcoming offers.

Please follow this link: Mediaholix

FREE - Batteries for MacBook Air (2012 to 2017). One has over 500 charging cycles and the other over 300. Both only get a couple of hours between charges but are really suited to machines that have completely failed batteries. I can include the special screwdrivers that are needed as I have just replaced these with new and have spares. Making the swap is very easy and just takes 10 minutes. Seems a shame to take them to the tip.

It has been a while since I last posted so I thought I would update you. As mentioned previously, I have joined forces with Computer Friendly (local charity) to help scale the project and to date, I am pleased to announce that we have delivered over 200 laptops to local schools so that their pupils can successfully learn from home. Thank you all for your donations and your support. The GoFundMe page has raised over £3000 which has funded all the new hard drives, RAM and accessories to enable this to happen. Awesome effort!

The one thing we take the most seriously is the security of your data. As discussed previously, we remove the hard drive from the donated laptop but it will still have personal data on it and we want to ensure that is completely destroyed. I contacted a company that specialises in this and they were generous enough to send a truck to shred the drives. If you know of companies that need to securely dispose of IT equipment, please send them to https://vyta.com/ as they did an excellent job. As you can see from the truck in the video below, the division that shreds disks is called, you guessed it, DiskShred. 😃

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzPr_MSO6zY

HDD Shredding by Computer Friendly with help from DiskShred When we remove hard drives from laptops to refurbish them for school kids, we need to ensure any data from the previous owner is destroyed. The safest way to...

Update: Current bid is £260

It has been a couple of weeks since we auctioned off the Macbook Air and when I announced it, I mentioned that we had a gaming laptop that someone may be willing to make a decent donation for. So here it is:

This is a PC Specialists machine from around 5 or 6 years ago built on the Clevo laptop platform but it was cutting edge in its day. It has a Core i7-4910MQ processor with 8 logical cores paired with 16GB DDR3 RAM running at 1600MHz. It has Intel HD graphics built-in but also has an AMD Radeon HD8970M discrete graphics card with 4GB RAM. It has 2 independent SSDs at 256GB each - one being the boot drive and the other being easily accessible to upgrade to a 1 or 2TB drive for game storage. It has Windows 10 Home 64bit installed with all recent updates and a backlit keyboard.

The platform is eminently overclockable and is supported by Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility and MSI's Afterburner but even in its base state, I have played a few modern games at >40FPS on medium settings. It is a laptop after all and thermal throttling is the biggest limiter. Maybe a project to add water cooling??!

I have also linked it to my Xbox One and streamed a number of games directly to the machine with barely any lag, using an Xbox controller plugged in via USB.

On the downsides, the battery does not seem to be recognised by the machine so it will not charge up but as this machine needs a reasonable amount of power, it will need to be plugged in most of the time anyway. Also, in the process of cleaning it with alcohol, the soft-touch coating on the top of the case has become a little tacky. I would recommend a sticker of your choice to cover the lid but I will leave that up to you. The fingerprint reader is installed but does not appear to be supported by Hello in Windows 10.

So, who is interested? As before, the winning bidder will be asked to make a donation to the GoFundMe page and the entire bid will go to fund parts for getting more laptops ready to distribute to school children. Given the time it has taken to get this ready for auction, I would like the minimum bid to be £100 and that will help us get 5 more machines refurbished.

To bid, please use the Messenger button on the top of the Device Donation Project page or you can message me direct through Messenger. Bidding will close at 21:00 on Monday 15th February 2021 and the highest bid with a timestamp on or before 20:59 will be the winner. I will try to post the current winning bid value on this post as the auction progresses.

Disclaimer: This machine has been refurbished as best efforts and has no warranty of any kind. Buyer beware.

Let the bidding commence!

Quick Update:

35 laptops given to school kids who need them across 5 schools

20 tablets and phones wiped and prep'd for distribution

16 laptops ready or almost ready to be deployed

£2137 raised so far - including £362 from the auction of the Macbook Air!

As mentioned previously, I have joined forces with a local charity that provide some indemnity protection and do safety tests on the power supplies. They are called Computer Friendly and have 7 or 8 volunteers like me taking in hardware and refurbishing it for onward distribution. I will post their contact details in a follow-up post.

As we appear to be over the peak of donations and demand, I will be scaling back my efforts so tomorrow will be the last day I will be in the Parish Centre. If you have a laptop, tablet, or phone in a cupboard or drawer, do please bring it down between 10 and 4 and we will ensure it goes to a good home.

After tomorrow, we will have a regular drop-off time of between 10 and 4 on Mondays with our Clerk (Chris Kenny) takeing delivery and I will collect on an ad hoc basis.

For those interested in a few images, here they are:

- 10 laptops finished and ready to go out to a local school

- All the hard drives I have taken out of your donated laptops - 57 so far (some machines were just too old but I took the hard drive out anyway so that it can be securely destroyed

- Sometimes I have to do "open heart surgery" to get at the hard drive to replace it

- And finally, this is the refurb station in the Parish Centre.

UPDATE: I have had over 25 bids and they have all been incredibly generous. The current high bid is £350 so if you were planning on bidding, you have just over 3 1/2 hours until bidding closes. The highest bid at the turn of 11:59 tonight will get the Macbook Air. Good luck to those still in the running!

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You all have been incredibly generous with your donations - both financial and hardware - and it was inevitable that something would come in that we would be better off selling than repurposing.

We have been gifted a Macbook Air (2013) that is in mint condition with its box and its leads and I have confirmed with the donor that they are happy for us to sell it to raise funds.

This Macbook Air has been upgraded to a 256GB NVME drive that is twice as fast as the drive that was in it. It has also had the latest MacOS installed on it - Big Sur. Similar spec'd machines on eBay are selling for between £200 and £300. I am hoping someone is willing to buy this from me to add funds to the cause. It has cost money to do the upgrade so I am asking a minimum bid of £100.

If you would like to be the proud owner of this lovely machine, please message me directly with your bid and I will close the bidding at 23:59 on Monday 25th January. The winning bidder will be notified and they can then make their donation to the GoFundMe page and the Macbook Air will be theirs.

Let the bidding commence!

P.S. We have also had a well spec'd gaming laptop come in that we will be offering for bids later in the week so if that is more your speed, keep an eye out for that by liking/following this page.

10 machines delivered to Kirsten Robertson, Assistant Head of St Georges yesterday and they are already being distributed to the pupils who need them the most. Many thanks to all the donors - it will make a massive difference to those families.

Feedback from Roundwood is that they managed to secure the machines they need during a previous lockdown so there is no immediate need there. We are still trying to get feedback from SJL and I have one request from Catherine Warrington for a child who has to access an application not supported in Google Classroom.

I am continuing to refurbish machines that have come in so if you know of any families in desperate need that may not have been covered by our engagement with the schools, then please contact me directly in confidence and we can see what can be done to help.

I will be at the Parish Centre again today so if you have a laptop or tablet to donate, please come down and drop it off. We**am and Windows 7, 8 or 10 much preferred please as they can run the online learning software. Please reset any tablets to remove your data.

The fund is over £1400 so many thanks for your generosity.

Major milestone met today - first 10 laptops were delivered to the primary school this afternoon ready for IT support to configure them before distribution to kids in need.

Also, I have 10 more ready to be delivered at St Georges tomorrow morning. As the recipients are all GCSE or A-level students, I have tried to steer the better machines to the secondary schools as they will have more demanding use cases such as CAD software or media production. These are all supplied with a new mouse and in a laptop bag - albeit not a new bag - to protect the machine in transport. Thanks must go to Nicola of trainingu.co.uk who has donated 11 laptops and bags from her stash she uses for IT training. Very generous and will help many families.

Below are a few pictures of my new refurb setup at the Parish Centre. As you can see, I need quite a bit of space which is at a premium in my house with three kids homeschooling and a wife running her own business. It is also much quieter in the Parish Centre......mmm. I wonder for how long they will let me stay here?? :-)

The stack of black bags are the laptops destined for St Georges tomorrow and the white plastic box is full of laptops and mice that went to the primary school today. I still have about 15 to get through so I will be in and out the Parish Centre for the next few days so do please drop any spare laptops off if you no longer need them.

Thanks again for your continued support and generosity.

Thanks again for all your donations so far. Here is an update:

- The Parish Clerk has kindly agreed to take delivery of donated laptops, tablets and phones on Mondays between 10 and 4. She is there this afternoon so if you tried this morning (apologies - a bit of miscommunication on my part) then please pop back before 4.

- To minimise the amount of kit coming into my house (and taking over :-) ), the Clerk has also agreed that I can set up a Covid safe refurbishment station at the Parish Centre (as it is currently vacant) which will start from tomorrow at 11 so if you cannot make it today, then please bring your kit tomorrow between 11 and 4. If tomorrow does not work for you then please message me and we can work something out.

- After feedback from the schools, we can now be a bit more specific about what they need. We are looking for laptops with we**ams built into the lid/screen and these can be Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10. Unfortunately, older machines with Windows XP stickers are proving to be too underpowered to be useful for modern software. However, it may be worth bringing those older machines down to the Parish Centre and we can salvage some parts and help you destroy personal information before recycling the machine.

- The GoFundMe pot is now over £1200. By my reckoning, we can refurbish around 30 laptops (new hard drive and mouse @£30 each) and augment ~25 tablets/phones with new cases and charging leads. I am having to spend small amounts on USB keys, additional RAM and Isopropanol to make this happen but that essentially consumes the fund. However, I have visibility of another 10-15 laptops coming in this week so we will need another £450+ to be able to convert them. So if you have not yet donated to the fund, please give what you can to the following link:

https://gofund.me/17798c67

Thanks again for all your support. It is incredibly generous of you all.

Device Donation Project - Redbourn, organized by Gary Atkinson **This campaign is targeted at the residents of Redbourn, Harpenden, Flamstead, Wheat… Gary Atkinson needs your support for Device Donation Project - Redbourn

We have broken through the £1000 target!

I thought it was pretty aspirational when I set it but all the donors have been really generous. We have passed the £1000 mark with just 23 donors. Imagine how many laptops we could give away if 50 donated or 100??

If you would like to contribute to this effort but don't have a laptop spare, please give what you can. The Link is here:

https://gofund.me/17798c67

I thought I would provide an update. I turn 50 tomorrow and am likely to take the day off from this but this is where we stand:

I have 10 laptops upgraded, cleaned with a charger and a brand new mouse ready to go for PAT (safety) testing before being distributed to the primary school and St Georges - I don't yet have the numbers from Roundwood or SJL. I have enough kit and funds to probably do another 10 so they will be done early next week.

I also have a variety of tablets and phones. The tablets will be going to the elderly and/or isolated for better communication and I am working with Redbourn Care Group to identify those in need. As the phones need SIM cards/contracts, these will be distributed through a local charity called Computer Friendly to people coming out of care or referred by Mind.

The third picture is unfortunately all the kit that is damaged or broken and cannot be easily repaired. I have now engaged formally with the aforementioned local (St Albans District) charity who has been doing this for a while and all broken machines will go into storage to be used to fix other laptops that come in so they may still be useful.

The Parish Clerk has also graciously approved the use of the Parish Centre as a drop off centre for laptop donations but I will send out more information on that over the weekend.

Thanks for your ongoing support - oh and the fund is up to ~£900. Great effort by all!

Someone has very generously donated a 4th gen iPad but has not been reset and so is locked with Apple's anti-theft mechanism. This raises two points:

1. If this was your iPad (it has a black face and was in a black plastic case - the back at least) and you have an email address that corresponds to the image below, please get in touch so that we can get the iPad reset and ready for donation.

2. If you are thinking of donating an iPad or iPhone, please follow the instructions below to ensure your data is completely erased and unlock the device for future use.

Thanks.

**How to remove your personal information from your old device**

Back up your device - either iCloud or iTunes/Music app on PC

Sign out of iCloud and the iTunes & App Store.
- If you're using iOS 10.3 or later, tap Settings > [your name]. Scroll down and tap Sign Out. Enter your Apple ID password and tap Turn Off.
- If you're using iOS 10.2 or earlier, tap Settings > iCloud > Sign Out. Tap Sign Out again, then tap Delete from My [device] and enter your Apple ID password. Then go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Apple ID > Sign Out.

Go back to Settings and tap General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. If you turned on Find My [device], you might need to enter your Apple ID and password.

If asked for your device passcode or Restrictions passcode, enter it. Then tap Erase [device].

Just had a single awesome donation. I won't name her to save her blushes but all 5 of these are perfect for what we need. All Windows 7 with a we**am and a charging cable. Perfect!

Now need to order 5 more new hard drives!

Everyone is so very generous.

Bit of an update:

The GoFundMe campaign is going well - we are up to £661 at this point. Still time to donate if you have not already. With that money, we can deliver 15 refurbished laptops and half a dozen protected Ipad/tablets! Many thanks.

The laptops keep coming in - so thanks for that. Unfortunately, some are just too old to be useful but I will salvage any parts and destroy the hard drive anyway to protect the data. If you still intend to donate a laptop, here are a few things we need:

1. Needs to have a Windows 7, 8, or 10 sticker so that it can be upgraded to the latest software for no cost
2. Needs a charging cable/block as the battery is often degraded so it will need to be plugged into mains power most of the time
3. Ideally, it has a built-in we**am so that the teacher can view the child over video on those occasions that they need to.

And finally, here are a couple of pictures of machines being installed and yet more kit from Amazon. Enjoy! 😃

New parts have arrived. Should have 4 working laptops ready to give away, to go with the two already ready, by the end of the day.

Thanks for the donations and keep it coming!

Open heart surgery on a laptop!

For those interested, this is how we clean and upgrade the laptops for distribution to kids who need one for online learning.

The hard drive comes out. This is replaced with a much faster SSD to improve performance. Your donations fund the new drives.

The amount of memory/RAM is checked and we look to see if there is space to add any more. This machine has 1 "stick" of 2GB so there is a spare slot to add 2GB more. 4GB is really the minimum to run Windows 10.

If the machine is older than 7/8 years then we will also replace the CMOS battery. This ensures that the very basic configuration and date/time is stored even if the main battery is dead and it is not plugged in.

As mentioned below, We have had a good number of devices come in but they need some upgrades. Please share this link with friends and family so that we can get the parts that we need.

For reference and to see what your donation might deliver:

- £20 gets us a 120GB SSD to massively improve an old laptop

- £20 supplies a basic laptop case to protect the refurbished machine

- £10 adds 2GB to a laptop to be able to use newer software

- £10 adds a basic mouse for increased productivity over the in-built trackpad

- £10 adds a case and cover to an iPad or other tablet

- £5 adds a protective case to a phone

If you can make a donation, it would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/device-donation-project-redbourn?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1

Device Donation Project - Redbourn, organized by Gary Atkinson **This campaign is targeted at the residents of Redbourn, Harpenden, Flamstead, Wheat… Gary Atkinson needs your support for Device Donation Project - Redbourn

Device Donation Project - Redbourn updated their business hours.

Device Donation Project - Redbourn updated their website address.

This page has been created to document the progress of the device donation project so that people can see what is happening to the kit they have donated for the use of our local community.

We have got off to a great start and I have already received 10 laptops and 5 tablets or phones. As you can see from the picture below, I have taken over the dining room table to see if we can bring these old machines back to life, much to my wife's chagrin! :-)

Unfortunately, most of these laptops will need one or more upgrades to make them usable so I have set up a donations page to allow us to get the parts we need. It may only take £20 to get something very usable so watch out for the details when they get posted.

As a test, I have done a full upgrade on one machine with parts I already had and it is likely better than when it was brand new. This is now ready to be distributed.

You may be asking yourself, how are we going to determine who needs these devices? Well, we are working with the local schools as the teachers are distinctly aware of which children are having to share a PC or don't have access to one at all. They will guide us as to who needs a machine most.

We are also working with Redbourn Care Group to help identify those people who are currently isolated and could benefit from a tablet or phone to communicate with their family or local caregivers.

As things progress, I will try and keep this page updated. Please do share with friends and family even if they are not local as it might inspire them to do something similar for their community.

Thanks