On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 13:41, you wrote: > Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > 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. If this transaction took place _recently_, i.e. in the last few months, yes I'd agree, at first sight anyway, gross profiteering, but then one has to ask if a modern multi-gigabyte disk would have worked properly with that very old PC. Probably not. You'd be really hacked off if they had been sold a modern 20+ GB disk that didn't work properly, or was set up with a tiny partition so the bios worked ok wouldn't you?
> >>>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. Silly chumps. If new, or _very_ nearly so, that's a very full retail price agreed, but not a total wrought. An older 400 to 700 MHz machine would probably have done the job at about 1/3 to 1/2 the cost. > > 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. Understandably. > >>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. Perhaps the Molten Media trustees do indeed need reminding what their staff is doing? Anybody else like to comment? -- C. S.
