Large-Scale Computer Refurbishing

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Bruce Buckelew at Oakland Technology Exchange (OTX) West runs a large noncommercial refurbishing program. Bruce is a retired IBM engineer who began doing volunteer tech support in an Oakland school near his home 12 years ago. The poor quality and lack of equipment in this inner-city school caused him to start a refurbishing operation in the basement of Oakland Technical High School.

Bruce is one of the veterans of the field, running a 2,500 computer per-year refurbishing program. He is still an unpaid volunteer, but has three full-time staff members who run the administrative office and production functions. OTX West is a large model program that operates out of an 18,000 square foot warehouse and attracts visitors from all over the country to see how this work can be done optimally.

OTX West supplies computers to the Oakland schools and to the families of low-income students in the schools. They produce three products with different software options appropriate to their users:

• Home Windows computers for middle school and high school students and their families
• Home New Deal-based Pentium I computers for middle school students and their families
• Windows Pentium II computers for classrooms, teachers, and labs

The program also has a CTC training lab that families must use before they can acquire their computers. Bruce works 40 to 50 hours per week and has adult job training technicians working the benches to refurbish the approximately 200 computers that the program produces each month. He is also actively involved with CTCNet to promote best refurbishing practices among community technology centers interested in starting computer take-home programs. OTX has fail rates at or below those of Dell, and recipients can exchange a computer for any reason and get another one. OTX West can provide this level of service because of their standardized configurations.

Learn more about how schools, CTCs, and other nonprofits can use recycling programs to acquire donated equipment in OTX West's how-to guide and video which can be found on the America Connects Building Connections Web site. For additional information about acquiring refurbished equipment, see TechSoup Stock's Recycled Computer Initiative (RCI) and TechSoup's searchable database of hardware refurbishers and recyclers.