• Only 11% of PCs are recycled; the percentage for televisions and mainframes recycled is lower.¹
• 68 percent of consumers stockpile used or unwanted computer equipment in their homes.²
• Nearly 2 in 10 consumers that disposed of a desktop computer or monitor in the past year threw them in the trash. Fourteen percent of those that disposed of a laptop computer last year threw it in the trash.³

This is A LOT of computers that are being trashed and unused. This is really unfortunate because although computers can become too slow or lack the memory to run the newest, fastest applications, they can still be functional and their processing power can be put to good use. Ask yourself what you do with your computer. Many people find that all they really do is email and get on the internet. If this is the case then why do you need that newer, faster, bigger, better computer. Why not purchase a two or three year old computer if all your doing is writing papers and checking email?

One thing we can do is recycle our old computers. I’m not specifically talking about salvaging the resources in a computer, I’m talking about refitting computers and using functional parts to build new ones. I found two organization in Chicago that do exactly that. One is Computers for Schools. Computers for schools is a non-profit organization that accepts old computer and then refurbishes them and sells them for 1/3 the cost of a new one (I couldn’t find any prices).

Another organization that has a similar mission but is also promoting free software is FreeGeek Chicago. FreeGeeks goal is to “provide functional computers, education, internet access and job skills training to those who want them.”⁴ FreeGeek Chicago not only accepts old computers, but they also accept volunteers. They also have a deal in which if you volunteer for 20 hours you can earn a FreekBox (a rebuilt computer). You can buy computers from FreeGeek for $50 (What a deal!). All computers provided by FreeGeek run on a version of the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

1. From the Women’s Learning Partnership.
2. HP Fact Sheet, Earth Day 2005. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/environment/earthday-fs.pdf
3. From Consumer Report’s Greener Choices.
4. From FreeGeek/about.

I’m thoroughly confused. What is “professional?” Do you have to pay 10k or more for a site license for a product to be professional? Does it have to be created by a stock trading corporation for it to be professional? I would really like somebody to explain this to me because I’m not sure I get it. Me personally… I would use whatever tools are at hand, and if it doesn’t work the way you want it to, get under the hood and figure out how to make it. Of course you can’t necessarily do that with proprietary software.

Another feed that caught my attention was something that was posted by Will Richardson and the comments that followed. Basically it was a post about BlackBoard and how schools are using to to create the same functionality that you would get from a blog, wiki, etc, only in a controlled environment. I don’t know what pricing is on BlackBoard, but I’m willing to bet that it’s more than my left kidney is worth. (It actually depends on the number of students that you have at your school, but the site still won’t give you an actual price.) Why would schools choose to use a expensive, proprietary, closed system over a free, nonproprietary, open system? I haven’t read any studies on the security of BlackBoard and I don’t know what is involved in administrating a BlackBoard site but I do know that the security of an open source wiki is dependent on: your webserver, your database server, and your code. With an open source wiki (my own experience being with Mediawiki.) the administrator is in complete control. I wonder if that is part of the problem? Do web administrators want to pass the buck so to speak? I’m not a coder, but I was able to figure out how to lock down a wiki to a few dozen people just by researching through support sites and forums to find the snippets of code needed to make the software do what you want. Is it any more secure than BlackBoard? I honestly don’t know, but I’ve also searched for security issues with Mediawiki and like I said before, it’s how you administrate your webserver, your database server, and your code. As far as I can tell, if those are handled badly you will have problems all over the place.

I wouldn’t want an IT person’s job because they have to put up with a lot of crap. I’ve seen plenty of times when they are the hero of the hour and I commend them for that. I’ve been rescued a few times by IT people and I’ll gladly buy them a beer for that. On the other hand… I’ve also seen problems caused by IT. I understand that you can’t give everybody what they want, but I also think that just because a person doesn’t know how to do something, other people shouldn’t be punished for it. There needs to be some trust put in the user. Work with the user to try to implement new things (not to mention that a user might actually be able to teach IT something).

I was browsing my RSS feeds today, getting caught up on all my back reading when I found this post from Sept. 29 at librarian.net. (Take a look at the powerpoint presentation, it gives a great rundown on what FLOSS is.) It’s great to see people talking about FLOSS. I’m constantly telling people about open source applications. (So far, for me, the big open source application winner has been Audacity.) The one criticism that I have about this post is that if you want people to take the open source leap, you should introduce it to them in small steps. It’s one thing to let libraries know about open source solutions for Windows, or Mac. It’s another thing to get them to drop their current OS and hop on the open source wagon completely (Linux). I think that might be a little bit too much of a leap of faith for some people.

This summer my work was selling old computers with a monitor very inexpensively. I was seriously considering purchasing one and setting it up with Ubuntu Linux for my wife so that she would have email and internet access during the day while I had the laptop. I didn’t because we really didn’t have the funds or the space, but I’m still keeping the option open. I’m willing to take the chance because I’m familiar with some open source projects and I understand some of the risks that are involved with using open source software. I’m not a coder but I do know my way around a command line… a little bit.

If we want to spread the open source message we really should be trying to “transition” people into it. We should be giving libraries open source solutions for their current OS (probably Windows, but could be Mac OS X) so that they can get their feet wet and feel the savings when they can go with a free solution rather than proprietary one.

Practically speaking, we can create an open source distribution CD for people and give it to them to try out. Since I’m a Mac user, I’ll use Mac as an example. I’ll download several open source programs for Mac: Audacity (sound editor), NeoOffice (Microsoft Office alternative for Mac, There is also OpenOffice, but this involves some technical stuff to install), Firefox (web browser), Adium (Instant Messaging), and VLC (video player). Burn it to a CD and then give it to somebody to try out on their computer.

One final note…
Oh the irony. The post mentions Howard County Library as switching completely to open source. If you dig around their website in their electronic resources section, you’ll find that digital and audio books are available through Overdrive and Net Library. These services can only be used on Windows machines using Windows Media Player because of the DRM that is included in the download. Any audio books downloaded using these services cannot be used at Howard County Library computers because they are running Linux. Isn’t that just a kick in the pants.