The $15,000 Challenge...

[endscape]

My former high school is a Gates foundation funded institution, and as such, students have around $50,000+ a year to do community projects. Apperantly a group of students are drafting a proposal to build computers and give them away to non-profit organizations, they've asked me to help.

So the question is, if you had $15,000 (price must include shipping to Bellingham Wa, 98226) to build 20 computers (including monitor, keyboard/ mouse, and OS) how would you do it? $15,000 is the absolute limit.

I've got their first draft of the grant application and part list, I'll post the parts in a minute.


Thanks,

E

 

[Tiny]

non-profits rarely need more that your run of the mill office computer. 15k can be stretched to make a lot more than 20 office computers.

 

[endscape]

non-profits rarely need more that your run of the mill office computer. 15k can be stretched to make a lot more than 20 office computers.

Alright...examples?


Thanks,


E

 

[Tiny]

price one out at newegg that is similar or the same as the Dell Dimension 2400. That is all a non-profit needs.

 

[mohammedtaha]

semprons or celerons ... use older motherboards ... intel motherboards for intel.. im not too sure about amd ...

256mb ram is perfectly fine ..

20 gb hd

cdrw

floppy drives ..

built in video or fx5200 or some mx ..

built in sound ..

built in ethernet

antec slk case with psu 300W is good enough

you got urself a pc ..

or u can just go to the dell website and you have 20,000 cheap pcs if you're allowed to .. maybe e-machines ... no one mentioned stability i mean you're probably gonna be using windows right ?

 

[Buckus]

Buy 'em from Dell @ $500 a pop.

 

[Shane]

Heck dell sells computers for 399.00 thats the route I would take and could order like 35 of them.

 

[moralpanic]

Definitely get it from Dell. For 20 computers, you don't want to do actual tech support for them, unless that's your job. If it is, then why the heck are you here asking for such simple advice?

 

[Othersider]

Computers from Dell (look in the server section, even cheaper).

Source the monitors locally if you can; save on shipping.

 

[wake6830]

With a bulk purchase like that, and with what your overall project is, you should call a dell customer rep and see if there are any special deals. They may be willing to work with you if you tell them what you need and how much you can spend.

 

[primea]

you might even get better pricing if you contact the vendor directly and tell them what you're doing ... maybe even get parts @ reseller price ...

 

[Tiny]

buying from Dell may not fit in with doing a computer class progect when using MS money. That is why I suggesting buying from the egg.

 

[scottatwittenberg]

whatever you do, get computers with no software.. a non-profit can get XP pro for $7 a copy at techsoup.org. they can get office for $18, etc...

also.. i was the network admin for a non profit.. and personally i would gratefully have accepted any computer donations if they were given to us.. but.. if such an opportunity were to be given to me, i would definitely like to talk to the person donating the equipement and tell them what i wanted/needed..

so.. really.. if it is a big enought non-profit that they have in house support, talk to them.. ask them what they need.. personally.. i would find it tempting to order a bunch of mac minis for an office situation.. i don't know anything about networking macs though, and putting them in domains etc..

if i were to build the comptuers myself i would say something to the extent of:
mobile amd, socket A
512 mb ddr 400
shuttle an35
zalman 7000
decent $40 ish psus proabaly fortron, sparkle, enermax
no optical, or $30 burners..
40 gig hard drives or smaller if i could get them for cheap..
cheap vid cards.. under $40..

bulk mice/keyboards off ebay or something.. get cheap shit.. the will just mess them up anyways, or steal mice if they are good.. it happens..

that's about it.. shuttles would work nice in an office situation since you could move them and they take up less desk space.. where i worked, all of the comptuers were on the floor and sucked up tons of dust out of the carpet, i hated that.. but people insisted that they needed all available desk space..

also.. on newegg, you can get a little bit of a discount by going bulk.. but try vendors directly too...


but whoever said 256 mb of ram.. NO.. 512, it is not that much more.. and worth it.. just my opinion but it makes a bigger difference more than anything.. my mom's 1.2 duron with 512mb kicks the crap out of that dell 2.8ghz p4 HT comptuer i had at work with 256 mb..

oh.. don't put floppy drives in them.. they will just get the metal shields jammed in the drives.. it is a waste of $10 too.. put a burner in if you must, and tell them to buy cd-rw disks for 50 cents each... or keep a spindle of cdrs in your office for them.. or have them get a flash drive.. but really.. they shouldn't need floppies.. either they will bring somethign from home with a virus on it.. jam the shield in the drive, or take home stuff they do at work, which technically would be property of the place they are working..

ok.. i am spent..

i don't like the dell idea... maybe find a B+M store in the area and see if you can work a dael with them.. that way they can get on-site service, or at least have smoene drive a computer over to the store, i nstead if talking with someone from dell who is in india reading responses off of a computer screen... well if you spend 15k you can get support from dell small business.. but still..

 

[quasimodem]

you could probably call gateway and have them make you an incredible offer for that much money and do more good for the school by giving them more machine then they could ever need.

or any other company close bye, as long as they warrenty the items for some time, they would probably bend over backwards to get $15k in sales in 1 ticket.

QM

 

[Othersider]

EPIAs! Hordes upon hordes of 500mhz VIA EPIAs!

 

[rayman2k2]

ask MS if they can supply WinXP licenses.

 

[Lsv]

I'm using Canadian prices and keeping the 15 Grand in CAD just to show you.

All prices from www.CanadaComputers.com (would be cheaper with manufacturer deals)
I am asuming you need keyboard/mouse/monitor aswell. To keep everything to a minimum a motherboard with onboard video/sound/lan was selected.

Hardware -

Celeron-D 320 2.4 GHz RETAIL BOX $100
ASUS P4VP-MX VIA P4M266A, Micro-ATX, 533MHz FSB $65
Noname 256MB PC-3200 DDR400 $45
313-4 Mid Tower w/ 350W PSU Grey $33
BenQ 656A 56X CD-ROM (Ivory) OEM $18
Maxtor 40GB ATA-133 OEM $61
17" CRT Monitor *refurbished, 30-day warranty SPECIAL $64.99
IBM 101 Keyboard PS/2 $4.99
Labtec PS/2 Wheel Mouse w/ Light OEM $3.49

Total No Tax $395.47
Add 15% Government and Provincial Taxes $454.79

As you can see computers are cheap even brand new, I used a refurbished monitor only because it is cheaper and most will do the trick for non-profit.

At this price you could build 33 computers at a price of-

$15008.07 CAD

With 15,000$ American you can easily do 40 or so computers, please keep in mind not for profit establishments do not need the gaming aspects of computing power. From where you came up with this 20 computer limit is absurd. What are you going to do.... give the Tsunami Relief Foundation Half Life 2 and a 6600GT?

So yea my 2 cents.

 

[RandysWay]

I also second getting Dell's without any software. Why would you even want the tech support of 35+ computers?

 

[Othersider]

The AMD PIC sounds perfect for this project, and AMD would probably love to give them to a project like this near cost. Also, MS would probably enjoy showing off the capabilities of Windows CE.

You'd probably have more than enough left to get USB optical drives and monitors for at least 60 of these. Put a PIC on every desk of a charity in the freakin' state of Washington!

 

[scottatwittenberg]

The AMD PIC sounds perfect for this project, and AMD would probably love to give them to a project like this near cost. Also, MS would probably enjoy showing off the capabilities of Windows CE.

You'd probably have more than enough left to get USB optical drives and monitors for at least 60 of these. Put a PIC on every desk of a charity in the freakin' state of Washington!

or windows xp embedded...

does anyone know how fast they are and how much memory they have? it looks interesting..

with a "pic" you are getting close to the realm of using thin clients.. which would be interesting..

 

[endscape]

Buy 'em from Dell @ $500 a pop.

Heck dell sells computers for 399.00 thats the route I would take and could order like 35 of them.

Computers from Dell (look in the server section, even cheaper).

Source the monitors locally if you can; save on shipping.

I wish! The students must build the machines. I dont make the rules, I just follow them (sorta') . I am looking at monitors and cases/ PSU's locally, I'll have to see what I can dig up.

Definitely get it from Dell. For 20 computers, you don't want to do actual tech support for them, unless that's your job. If it is, then why the heck are you here asking for such simple advice?

I used to be tech support for most of these non profits, but they have a new crew that is more then able to handle this many machines. You think this is simple?

whatever you do, get computers with no software.. a non-profit can get XP pro for $7 a copy at techsoup.org. they can get office for $18, etc...

also.. i was the network admin for a non profit.. and personally i would gratefully have accepted any computer donations if they were given to us.. but.. if such an opportunity were to be given to me, i would definitely like to talk to the person donating the equipement and tell them what i wanted/needed..

so.. really.. if it is a big enought non-profit that they have in house support, talk to them.. ask them what they need.. personally.. i would find it tempting to order a bunch of mac minis for an office situation.. i don't know anything about networking macs though, and putting them in domains etc..

if i were to build the comptuers myself i would say something to the extent of:
mobile amd, socket A
512 mb ddr 400
shuttle an35
zalman 7000
decent $40 ish psus proabaly fortron, sparkle, enermax
no optical, or $30 burners..
40 gig hard drives or smaller if i could get them for cheap..
cheap vid cards.. under $40..

bulk mice/keyboards off ebay or something.. get cheap shit.. the will just mess them up anyways, or steal mice if they are good.. it happens..

that's about it.. shuttles would work nice in an office situation since you could move them and they take up less desk space.. where i worked, all of the comptuers were on the floor and sucked up tons of dust out of the carpet, i hated that.. but people insisted that they needed all available desk space..

also.. on newegg, you can get a little bit of a discount by going bulk.. but try vendors directly too...


but whoever said 256 mb of ram.. NO.. 512, it is not that much more.. and worth it.. just my opinion but it makes a bigger difference more than anything.. my mom's 1.2 duron with 512mb kicks the crap out of that dell 2.8ghz p4 HT comptuer i had at work with 256 mb..

oh.. don't put floppy drives in them.. they will just get the metal shields jammed in the drives.. it is a waste of $10 too.. put a burner in if you must, and tell them to buy cd-rw disks for 50 cents each... or keep a spindle of cdrs in your office for them.. or have them get a flash drive.. but really.. they shouldn't need floppies.. either they will bring somethign from home with a virus on it.. jam the shield in the drive, or take home stuff they do at work, which technically would be property of the place they are working..

ok.. i am spent..

i don't like the dell idea... maybe find a B+M store in the area and see if you can work a dael with them.. that way they can get on-site service, or at least have smoene drive a computer over to the store, i nstead if talking with someone from dell who is in india reading responses off of a computer screen... well if you spend 15k you can get support from dell small business.. but still..

I will definatly pass along that website, that's awesome! I wish I knew about that when I was running a non profit . I'm trying to get meetings with the heads/ techs at the places these computers are going to see what they really want to do with them. More then likely they're just for the web, some light gaming, and learning office applications. I like you build idea, I'll price that out in a minute.

EPIAs! Hordes upon hordes of 500mhz VIA EPIAs!

BWAHAHAHAHA, I love it!

ask MS if they can supply WinXP licenses.

You'd think that wouldn't you? Nope, not even a discount.

I'm using Canadian prices and keeping the 15 Grand in CAD just to show you.

All prices from www.CanadaComputers.com (would be cheaper with manufacturer deals)
I am asuming you need keyboard/mouse/monitor aswell. To keep everything to a minimum a motherboard with onboard video/sound/lan was selected.

Hardware -

Celeron-D 320 2.4 GHz RETAIL BOX $100
ASUS P4VP-MX VIA P4M266A, Micro-ATX, 533MHz FSB $65
Noname 256MB PC-3200 DDR400 $45
313-4 Mid Tower w/ 350W PSU Grey $33
BenQ 656A 56X CD-ROM (Ivory) OEM $18
Maxtor 40GB ATA-133 OEM $61
17" CRT Monitor *refurbished, 30-day warranty SPECIAL $64.99
IBM 101 Keyboard PS/2 $4.99
Labtec PS/2 Wheel Mouse w/ Light OEM $3.49

Total No Tax $395.47
Add 15% Government and Provincial Taxes $454.79

As you can see computers are cheap even brand new, I used a refurbished monitor only because it is cheaper and most will do the trick for non-profit.

At this price you could build 33 computers at a price of-

$15008.07 CAD

With 15,000$ American you can easily do 40 or so computers, please keep in mind not for profit establishments do not need the gaming aspects of computing power. From where you came up with this 20 computer limit is absurd. What are you going to do.... give the Tsunami Relief Foundation Half Life 2 and a 6600GT?

So yea my 2 cents.

None of these computers will be going to tsunami relief, they are all destined for local charities. I like your specs, but they all are going to have 512MB of RAM (hopefully). Other then that, it looks good. I need to monkey around with Newegg and ZZF some more and see what I can come up with. At the moment, school =

The AMD PIC sounds perfect for this project, and AMD would probably love to give them to a project like this near cost. Also, MS would probably enjoy showing off the capabilities of Windows CE.

You'd probably have more than enough left to get USB optical drives and monitors for at least 60 of these. Put a PIC on every desk of a charity in the freakin' state of Washington!

Now that's cool.

I also second getting Dell's without any software. Why would you even want the tech support of 35+ computers?

Because we like pain and suffering? We dont actually have to be tech support for these machines, the non profits have that under control.

Did I answer everyones questions?

Thanks,

E

 

[Scorpionjwp]

Make sure when you get the computers, put a form of linux on them. Get lots of mini-itx motherboards and cheap cases that cost at least $20.00

 

[endscape]

Make sure when you get the computers, put a form of linux on them. Get lots of mini-itx motherboards and cheap cases that cost at least $20.00

Linux is not an option at this point.


Thanks,

Endscape

 

[zandor]

You should definately ask MS about software discounts. You'll need to know what non-profit is getting the machines, but they may well give you a serious deal. I know I got Officr for ~$130 and Win2K for about the same when I worked for a University, and I just got that stuff from CDW. Give them a buzz and see what they'll do.

 

[scottatwittenberg]

You should definately ask MS about software discounts. You'll need to know what non-profit is getting the machines, but they may well give you a serious deal. I know I got Officr for ~$130 and Win2K for about the same when I worked for a University, and I just got that stuff from CDW. Give them a buzz and see what they'll do.

www.techsoup.org

i already said it once.. but it is buried in my huge post.. winxp pro is $8 a copy for non-profits. office is $16 per license. but the non-profit that is using the software will have to get the licenses of course.. therefore you just need to build the boxes and install xp on them and then the non-profit can change it to their serial themselves.. haha.. i guess that is the best solution though.. kinda funny...

 

[Buckus]

Ha! Didn't know the students had to build 'em. That changes things. Well, shop around at the 'egg, I say. You can put together a decent box for $600

AMD Athlon64 2800+
512MB RAM
Some Socket 754 Mobo with integrated graphics
Zalman 7000B HSF
80GB Hard drive
Sony 16X DVD ± R/RW Dual-layer (could save about $30 going with a CD-R/RW/DVD)
Antec Case w/power supply
Some 17" Monitor.

Not too bad. Throw in some cheap keyboard/speakers/mouse for about $40 and you'd be set. I assume Mr. Gates is ponying up license of Windows for this project?

 

[endscape]

www.techsoup.org

i already said it once.. but it is buried in my huge post.. winxp pro is $8 a copy for non-profits. office is $16 per license. but the non-profit that is using the software will have to get the licenses of course.. therefore you just need to build the boxes and install xp on them and then the non-profit can change it to their serial themselves.. haha.. i guess that is the best solution though.. kinda funny...

I think we'll be giving them the money for the OSs and any other software they think they need, they'll buy it, we'll install it and all that jazz.


Thanks,

E

 

[endscape]

Ha! Didn't know the students had to build 'em. That changes things. Well, shop around at the 'egg, I say. You can put together a decent box for $600

AMD Athlon64 2800+
512MB RAM
Some Socket 754 Mobo with integrated graphics
Zalman 7000B HSF
80GB Hard drive
Sony 16X DVD ± R/RW Dual-layer (could save about $30 going with a CD-R/RW/DVD)
Antec Case w/power supply
Some 17" Monitor.

Not too bad. Throw in some cheap keyboard/speakers/mouse for about $40 and you'd be set. I assume Mr. Gates is ponying up license of Windows for this project?

I wish he was, the selfish b@$!@&d, only gave us money to start a new high school
. I'll be playing around at the 'egg when I finish this essay.


E