Mastodawn

🛠️ 💻 In the spirit of repairability and keeping good equipment alive, I've gathered up a few retired Thinkpads from local surplus auctions. I'm upgrading the RAM and drives and will be making them available in the next few weeks. These will be cozy little Solarpunk machines, older equipment preinstalled with a lightweight linux desktop and all the software you need for browsing, writing, docs, email, managing passwords, and videoconferencing.

I would like to find each one a good home with a nice person who will appreciate and take care of it. If you know of someone in the USA who would be a good fit, please put them in touch. I will be sending these for the cost of shipping (estimating about $40) with a completely optional tip jar to help cover the cost of upgraded parts.

When I have more details together I'll send out a link but for now ping me with any questions. Thanks! 🙏

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Corey Snipes 🌱Feb 18

Shipped out the first two rehabilitated Thinkpads this morning. These have SSD drives, upgraded RAM and are running Linux Mint instead of the usual bloatware/spyware. Light and lean. Yay for repairability. 🛠️

If there's someone in your life that needs decent laptop for general use, let me know. I will refresh and ship one at no charge. (Donations are welcome, to cover the cost of shipping.)

More info at the top of this thread.

#SolarPunk #RightToRepair #Linux #EthicalTech #reuse #EthicalTech

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Brennan Kenneth Brown Feb 20

@coreysnipes wonderful initiative! I've done the the same locally (I just wanted an excuse to tinker with ThinkPads mostly), how do I donate to you for this?

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Corey Snipes 🌱Feb 20

@brennan Excellent! My motivations are really similar, if I'm honest. Giving them away locally is a smart move. I've been thinking about that too, possibly integrated in a low-key linux install fest or small tech meetup. Maybe that's overcomplicating it. How have you found homes for yours?

TY for the donation offer. That's very kind. There's a "pay what you want" tip jar at the bottom of this page, if you're inclined: https://elephant.computer/tip-jar.html

Tip Jar

If you would like to help offset the cost of pairing, refreshing, and shipping an Elephant laptop, use one of the payment links or QR codes below. Thank you for supporting repair culture and equipment re-use! $40 (US) covers the packing materials and shipping to…

Elephant

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BrambleBearSnoring Feb 21

@coreysnipes

@DoomsdaysCW is there anyone in Maine doing this kind of laptop refurbishment? Who could maybe teach folx how to do it too? Increase and spread cozy #solarpunk laptops?

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DoomsdaysCW Feb 21

Not that I know of, @BrambleBearSnoring . But I will do some research and will post the results here!
@coreysnipes

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BrambleBearSnoring Feb 21

@DoomsdaysCW @coreysnipes

I will try asking around (but don't really know a lot if folx) and maybe post some paper queries at libraries, coops.

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DoomsdaysCW

So, right off the bat, I found a #Hackerspace I didn't know about at #UMaine in #Orono (which I will highlight for SPS). They do RaspberryPi, but not Linux -- but have some cool SPS stuff going on (like speaker repair). There are also some Linux Groups, but I haven't found any that specifically offer workshops. I'll keep looking, @BrambleBearSnoring ...

@coreysnipes