Dell is the best I know, off lease, checked, XP Pro, 1.4 Gig Pentium M, DVD drive, Latitude laptop, under $400. Deals without Operating system, XP home, student edition, cost under $100. Check Dell.com outlet, they also have an auction.
Still a lot of money at your age. Internet dialup can run $300 a year. Then there are the games.
If nana is within line of sight, a wireless router, a two cantenna setup, a mile if you can see it. $200 one time. $50, up on the roof, hunting signals from home.
It is not like you use it for homework. I repair computers, and when my kid was 13 the computer corner, desk and cool chair, dialup, CD burner, scanner, still ran over $1000. At 16 it was the laptop, IBM Thinkpad. Now 18, and a new Dell for University in the fall, $1000.
I bought her a car for the brain. Three of her girl friends have thanked me for the laptop, full MS Office. Computers were beyond the knowledge or wealth of their family, and that ThinkPad got around. They made the grades that got poor girls a ticket to the University. Learning MS Office was the differance between starting work with a mop or a desk.
America did buy us, but only to rain on our parade. Louisiana is the bottom of all rankings, get an education, walk if you have to, get to Atlanta or Austin. You will start at two to three times what passes for pay here, and there are promotions and raises. I supply a tech underground railroad. Mental Freedom!
Americans may have the stuff, and the money, but they pay me to fix it. They have limited application. To the upper class it is status, just having it, for everyone else it is a ticket out. In 1963 our black population had a fourth grade education, and a life of labor. Many got their kids through High School, and they got better jobs, and put their kids through College. Now many are entering the professions.
A generation that can barely read, and a generation that knew they could do better, are raising a third wave, and when I come along, spreading computers, they think I am worth my fee, for the computer means not being limited by not knowing. They are willing to spend months rent to get the grandchild a shot at life, and I pick up a lot of junk in my work. I can put together a system for $25, and make repairs for a cup of coffee. They are my best students. It is the differance between cleaning the office, or working there.
I shopped thrift stores for parts, got known as the computer guy that would answer questions, and changed the balance of power. Systems came in, were priced, then I put the parts together, cleaned up the system inside, and set it up working, they sold quickly. Then a waiting list developed. We got them where they were needed. I got so many questions I wrote up a sheet. It was the same information I included in a RedMage post, troubleshooting and restoration.
Fixing things was great, it is how I learned the business. Selling whole systems, to those who have to shop thrift stores to keep the kids dressed, was like being Santa, but when I taught, opened the world of IT, it became a Cult. Some of the Goodwill staff turned Geek.
Things I did not know. One stands out, she worked the back room because she could not stand to be around people, when she got excited she flapped her hands. She was considered learning disabled. Off and on she spoke to me, for she wanted a computer, she asked questions for over a year, often the same ones. She passed on many computers, she wanted one, but could not explain.
Finally she latched onto a Dell laptop, and bluntly told me to fix it. After an hour she took it and went off. A few weeks later, after much hand flaping, she said I had to meet her near her home. She brought the computer and I went through and cleared up the mess. Then she took it and walked out without a word.
Next it was CD burners, wireless, printers, always blunt and demanding, then fleeing. Sometime after the second year she said, you said that, what else? Nothing else, said I. Then we played that game for a while. Where does your knowledge end? Everyone at Goodwill thought I was a very tolerant person, and she was now speaking to someone, which could be considered an improvment.
One day I asked how her computer was, she said she gave it to her little sister who was starting college.
Her parents had gotten her an HP 286 when she started highschool. Everything she had gotten from me she taught her little sister. Years were directed at getting a top of the line laptop, learning it and the rest of IT, teaching her sister, and then making a gift she saw her parents could not.
Then came the stories of fixing her aunts computer, her neighbors heard and they all had kids, so she fixed and taught. She bought a new Dell. Everyone in her neighborhood knew her as that learning disabled girl. The flood wiped us out, but she got out with her lap top, filed with FEMA, worked the State, Red Cross, Goodwill on the Internet. She found the family an apartment and got her sister into college in Baton Rouge.
I got phone calls demanding to know how to link to broadband, as I steal when I need it, War Driving, and she had need. I tracked all the hot spots, as she would not tell me even what part of town she lived in. She scored, and I did not hear from her till she clicked on a free virus scan, then could not get rid of it. She had been working Dell, they charge, and wanted her to mail the computer, no chance.
She would not tell me what was wrong, I had to guess, testing my knowledge. After hours of learning about her computer from Dell, I walked her through system restore, and put it back to two days before she hit free virus scan. It all went away, everything was cured, so she hung up on me.
After almost two years her home is repaired, she is back, and called demanding to know how to get broadband. I told her everything I know, she said she had done all that, and hung up on me.
She did tell me she is going back to work at Goodwill. I get no more computers, she has a waiting list. I will be allowed to teach her hardware repair. She will find stuff I can sell on Ebay. I can have half the profits. Then she hung up.
She wanted to know how much I charge, and how I deal with the customers. I am in high demand in the rich white world, she is ten times as much in the black, she considers herself very liberal for talking to me. Learning I was Native American she said, Oh, that's why. All of her sisters college friends have computer problems, all the families trying to educate their children, computers being an alien white thing, call her parents asking for her help. She was that slow kid growing up, small and female, stayed in the house and watched out the window. School was hell. Family, neighbors, teachers, it was all bad. Wound up hanging clothes in the back room of a Goodwill, and then could only take it part time. A few words, and hand flapping was followed by a meltdown, and no she does not want to talk about it.
Her parents and sister deal with speaking to the customers, she comes in, fixes the computer, takes the money, and leaves. She has more work than she wants, but less money, so she is working more. She makes more in an hour than she did in a week. She gets several computer magazines, calls me up demanding to know the range and differance between Pentium M, and Duel Core Processors, I tell what I know and she hangs up.
Before WP I had no idea.
17 Mar 2007, 6:23 pm
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