On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 11:16, you wrote:
OK. Replying to my own message here.
Carl Cerecke wrote:
They donated some stuff to the toy libaray (a 486 running win 95A and 240MB hard drive. It was upgraded to win 95C and required a bigger hard drive - 540MB. They charge $120 (hundred twenty!) for the 540MB hard drive and took the smaller hard drive too.
They should not have taken the smaller drive unless it was part of the prearranged deal. Otherwise that's theft pure and simple.
Depending when the transaction took place and whether the drive was new or not, $120 might not have been a _too_ outrageous price. What might appear to you and I to be profiteering is sometimes justifiable when you take into account the realities of the overheads of running a business.
You can get a 20-30GB HD for $120. The $120 above did not include labour - only the drive.
They sold the Avon Toy Library a no-name 1.2Ghz laptop, with no floppy drive for backups, for $2600!
Was it brand new, or possibly just a month or two old?
Don't know. The fan rattles loudly against the cover sometimes. The Avon Toy Library was trusting the guy to give them a good deal. They didn't ask around, and they certainly didn't ask me.
What licenced software came as part of the deal?
Win XP
I'm going to pick up a license at lunchtime. How do I tell if it is Win 95C, not an earlier release?
AFAIK, the Win95 licence includes the upgrades.
It's having the bank-note like licence document that's important, not the distribution CD.
Yep. Got the license, but no CD. They said they would copy me a Win 95 CD for $15. I said no thanks.
If there was any reasonable toy library software for Linux, they'd be running that, I assure you. If I had free time, I'd code one.
Have you thought of koha?
http://www.koha.org
Although it's intended for book libraries & probably more than you need,
it might be a good place to start. It has been installed locally by a list member and is reported to work well.
I'll check it out. Toy libraries might just be different enough from Book libraries to make it an awkward fit.
Cheers, Carl.
