[committee] Notes for the committee meeting to discuss Computer Angels and UWA student computer needs

[Harry]

Hello UCC Committee

I had plans to tidy up this document but better something sratchy at
least to read over before the committee meeting to preempt some gritty
questions about the idea.

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 How it might work ..

0. UCC takes computers donated to Computer Angels and installs Free
   software.
1. Students who are also Guild members may purchase a computer for a
   nominal fee
2. Any repair has a fixed charge even if this means changing the entire
   machine.
3. Students may purchase vouchers for a computer or repair at the Co-Op
   which are transferred into the UCC account.
4. Guild makes available a small ground floor office for parts storage
   and as a service workshop/delivery point.
5. A wheel-like group has access to the ground floor office.
6. People contact UCC for a service via IRC, email, or from a kiosk
   outside the service office (rather than coming up to UCC)
7. wheel-like group member arranges a mutually convienient time to meet
   and repair the computer.
8. Informal training meet-ups (common lunch hour?) to discuss how to use
   the computer might be possible at modest cost ($5 or something).

Why the above points have been considered:

>From 0. Computer Angels has a WA Charitable Collections license
specifically for computer donations. Software can be installed in as
little as 6 minutes (mostly unattended and after unattended media wiping
of 20-40 minutes). Most corporate machines are fault free. The largest
task is cleaning (especially keyboards) Some documentation may be
appropriate to show how to clean the keyboard so people can
clean/maintain their own machine.

>From 1. With Guild no longer a compulsory campus fee, making this
available only to guild members is promotes membership benefits and is
also financially beneficial to UCC. Machines are esentially free
(donated). Faulty gear goes straight out to recycling and UWA may still
have a computer recycling skip in Eng. and Maintenance Services (do they?)

>From 2. The point of the fixed service fee is a known cost of repair.
Students may want to purchase a CDROM burner or USB stick for backups.
Alternatively, Some campus storage may be appropriate to maintain
off-machine backups with an easy remote backup utility.

>From 3. People can purchase a voucher at any time from Co-Op bookshop
and redeem them with computer under arm. Most repairs are hardware failures.

>From 4. The idea of a ground floor space is accessibility, security of
storage (less open than UCC clubroom), less intimidating (mainly of
climbing stairs with machine) and some privacy of UCC for members rather
than a thoroughfare.

>From 5. The choice of people with wheel-like access relies on people who
can resist borrowing stuff (even temporarily). Parts need to be
accessible when they are needed.

>From 6. Support and contact can be in many forms but in all cases a
separate channel to UCC mailing lists, irc, etc.

>From 7. This will only work if there are people willing to do the
support. Repairs have been infrequent in our experience and usually
catastrophic failure involving HD replacement or whole machine if the
m/b or psu fails,

>From 8. At Computer Angels we didn't address tertiary students very much
but we had some contact that where students admitted they had no clue
about their computer. Just as Computer Angels were addressing computer
literacy, it is important for any tertiary student to have a reasonable
working knowledge of computers. Rather than formalised training, casual
meet-ups for a group to compare experiences or discuss computer
difficulties would be a less rigid and time consuming chance to improve
literacy.

All the best
Harry McNally
President
Computer Angels
(and UCC member)