[Wiltshire] Anyone near Melksham?

[David Fletcher]

On Sun, 2010-12-05 at 16:07 +0000, Dianne Reuby wrote:

> But who _is_ our target audience? Surely anyone prepared to upgrade
> their hardware is already knowledgeable about available OSs?
> 
> Don't we need to reach all those people who have a PC that's OK for
> their needs, but that won't run Vista or Win7? They are at risk now XP
> isn't supported, but probably don't know there's an alternative.
> 

> Dianne
> 


Most people don't know what's inside a PC and why, and have probably
never opened the case for fear of invalidating their guarantee or
breaking something. The major PC retailers of course like their
customers to be dumb so that when it gets fouled up they go back to the
shop and pay good money for their experts to make it worse. My objective
here is to:-

1) Remove the mystery of the PC and make the knowledge of what goes
inside it and why, and how to choose and purchase parts to build one,
just as open as the operating system we love.

2) To start out with a common base line system that we know for sure
will easily install and run the latest 64 bit version of Ubuntu.
Anything less is a waste of everybody's time and if it doesn't result in
a snappy, well performing PC, it does nothing other than discourage
further participation.

3) Instil the "I made that" sense of pride in a job well done from
scratch.


If nothing happens this time I will probably just give up and enjoy my
beer and the talking at the shrinking monthly meetings.

Dave