This is the first of what I hope to be of many articles I will be writing for bishopthorpe.net so I hope that you find it interesting and informative. My name is Alex Bishop, I am a sixth form student in my last year at Tadcaster Grammar school, I am hoping to study engineering at Heriot Watt university in October of this year. I have started a scheme to refurbish old computers over my summer holiday. I am doing this by asking people to donate to me old computer hardware which I will then get up and running and distribute to people who want them. I am doing this all for free (although a donation would always be welcome but never compulsory). So far the response has been incredible as of now I have received over 20 PC and anything up to 30 monitors! I am storing them all in the loft at my parents house (much to my mothers dismay) but I do have some space left... somewhere, so donations are still welcome. I got the idea to do this scheme from introducing my Granddad to the modern world of PCs. Everything I know about computers I have taught myself by making lots of mistakes so if you're new to computers don't be scared and give it a go.
If I receive computers that I cannot repair I will either offer them to someone who can repair them or dispose of them at Hazelwood Court recycling centre (after dismantling them to have a look at how they work). I currently have far to many big monitors (no flat screens I'm afraid) in the loft so if anyone needs one it would be greatly appreciated if you could let me know and I will endeavour to give you one as soon as possible; They range form about 15'' in size to 19'' so if you could let me know what size you want that would be really helpful. I also I have a lot of spare CD drives, floppy disk drives and keyboards available so if you need one it would be of great use to me if I could give you one. My email address is bisheybishopalex10@hotmail.com
The operating system I am going to be using is called Ubuntu. An operating system for those of you who do not know is the program on your computer that controls all the other programs on your computer; I expect that you are using the windows operating system made by Microsoft there are many different versions of the windows operating system such as windows 2000, XP and Vista to name a few. I do not wish to discuss the relative merits and disadvantages of the windows operating system, I will leave that to a later time, but I will say that my Granddad uses both windows and Ubuntu and finds that they both do what he wants them to do. Ubuntu is what is known as open source; this means that all the code that has been used to make the operating system is available for anybody to look at and modify. This means that anybody who knows how to can alter the program and make it better, it also means that it is totally free. I have chosen Ubuntu as an operating system because my Granddad (who had no prior knowledge of computers) found it easy to use, it is totally free and I am letting people know of alternative operating systems they may not otherwise know about.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my article, feedback will always be appreciated and I hope to pass on some more of my knowledge I have learnt about computers over the years in future articles.
Alex Bishop