Frequently Asked Questions

The short answer is no, and here’s why:

• We fundamentally believe that people are good.
• We believe that most people will see the continued value of being able to access services and a community as being worth more than a few quid for a device.
• We trust that people will make the best choices they can for their personal circumstances.
• These devices, for the most part will languish in peoples cupboards abandoned and forgotten. Better for them to be out and helping people, no matter what that looks like.

We would obviously prefer everyone to cherish their devices and put them to full use but if even one device we give our makes a difference to a child, even an adult, then we are happy.

The answer to this, is maybe. We aren’t a full service repair shop and so you may be better off going to one of them. But, if you want to support the project by paying us to look at your device then we would be happy to do so. Get in touch with us using the form below.

YES!

There are still lots of ways you can help and we have listed a few below:

1 – Talk to your friends and neighbours about the project. Perhaps they have devices they can donate, or perhaps they know someone that would benefit from a device.

2 – Donate to our project. Your money helps us buy spare batteries, hard drives, parts and packing materials to keep the project running.

3 – Consider offering to help us to collect, refurbish, distribute devices and even raise money!

4 –  Consider giving some time to help someone you know to get online. Lots of people have the hardware they need but are scared to use it. Help someone near you to access the services and connections that being online allows.

Still want to help more? Get in touch to find out how!

Absolutely nothing, ever. 

Where possible we remove the hard drive or storage and run it through a heavy duty program which erases all data, irretrievably. We don’t even look at the hard drives. Make sure you get everything you want from the device before you donate it because once we have it, your data will be gone soon after.

We are afraid that there isn’t much we can do. Once you have signed over your device then we will get straight to work. If its an emergency please feel free to get in touch and we will try to help you, but we don’t record who donated which device in our records for data protection reasons. Sorry!

It depends on the device. It costs us between £10 for a phone all the way up to £200 for a good laptop depending on the amount of work and damage that the item has. We typically would spend a little more to get a device back up and running than a commercial repair shop would because we want to see as many devices back in use as possible.

We don’t always, but we do where it makes sense. We want to make sure our impact on the planet is as small as possible and if we can do that by using second hand parts and spares to get devices back into use, then it is a double win! Sometimes it isn’t worth using second hand parts, like batteries, but for many other things it is a great way to reduce costs and make sure the devices that have already been made, have the longest useful live possible.

In short, it depends. Some older operating systems aren’t supported any more and are at risk from virus attacks if they go online. We don’t want that so we may change the operating system on the devices. The chart below should help give you an idea of what we change, and what we leave alone..

If a device has a windows 7 /8 or 10 operating system on it, we will always try to install windows 10. Much of the time a device will activate and be registered with Microsoft with no trouble at all, but if we can’t activate Windows with a valid serial number, we will replace it with a suitable Linux distribution.