Anyone know a UK charity that can use surplus PC's?

We recently upgraded in the office and I thought our village school would leap at the chance of having them - which they would, unfortunately the Council that controls the school has a mega spec. for what they are prepared to accept, and we don't meet it.
What are those juniors doing, hacking, video editing porn films, programming Empeg III? they can't possibly need better than I'm offering!
So if any charity wants 4 pc's complete with monitors etc. which were working perfectly well in my office 'till 2 weeka ago....

Good list of companies here that will take them away:

http://www.itforcharities.co.uk/pcs.htm

or these people:

http://www.computersforcharities.co.uk/

...but they only want P2 400 or better (the cheek!)

Gareth

Yes - the Wise Group take old PCs and provide them to the unemployed to get them IT skills.

http://www.thewisegroup.co.uk/

More specifically.... http://www.thewisegroup.co.uk/COMMUNITY/Recycling_Initiatives.htm

To donate a PC call 0141 889 1175 or email [email protected]

...but they only want P2 400 or better (the cheek!)

Does Windows run on anything less, these days?

I'm still running machines which aren't even P2 400. Greedy bastards.

I run Win2k on P2 300 as a minimum. At work, I was desperate for general-access machines, so I put it on a P 200 and it... works. I also have Win2k running on a P166 (no MMX) at home. I use it for MP3 storage and CD burning. Ah, just trying to eek some extra life out of that box.

I'm still running machines which aren't even P2 400.

Well, maybe walking machines... <groan>

Ah, the subject of the thread lead me to believe it had something to do with Zip drives.

Does Windows run on anything less, these days?

Despite sitting in front of Windows for at least 60 hours a week, being a Windows developer and having half a dozen PCs in the house, I have only just got my first machine faster than a P2 366.

Also, in recent years Windows has actually got faster with each version. Win2k was faster in the same hardware (assuming a sensible amount of memory is installed) as Win98/WinNT4 and WinXP is faster than Win2k.

Not many people actually need anything faster than about a P2 366. Everyone needs at least 384MB of memory though. Although if you are ripping your entire CD collection a faster CPU definitely is handy...

Not many people actually need anything faster than about a P2 366.

Agreed.

Everyone needs at least 384MB of memory though.

Really? All 4 of the machines I have at home have <= 256MB of RAM.

A PPro 180 is actually a reasonable machine if you're not running bloated software.

Really? All 4 of the machines I have at home have <= 256MB of RAM.

Ah, but you'd be surprised how much faster a machine with 256MB of RAM is when you add just 128MB more. I'm talking Windows here by the way.

By the time you have installed a bunch of crap on it your average Win2k/WinXP machine it has used about 260MB of memory by the time it has booted and opened a couple of apps. Having a bit of memory spare by the time you get to this point really helps and makes the machine feel much faster than you might imagine.

Yep. 1 GB is my personal minimum for RAM these days. Even 512MB runs flat with a good Photoshop session or some 3-D modeling. With the price of it, why not?

-Zeke

I'm talking Windows here by the way.

I figured, as much. I custom compile my own linux kernels to work with the specific hardware config for each machine. I custom compile a lot of the software packages I use, too, to get rid of features I'll never use.

I'd buy more RAM, but I figure there's no point in sinking more money into obsolete equipment (heck, it was obsolete when I got it 2+ years ago).

Back to the original subject, thanks for your help and advice people, I can now report that, thanks to the good offices of a regular on this BBS, the pc's have now been put out to grass where they can roam and process freely in their retirement!