£££.I.T.4ward

Paying It Forward. That's it. That's all I want. That's all we need. Let me explain ...

The tl;dr

I want to take old, forgotten computers, laptops, and other devices and upcycle them, upgrade the graphics cards and raffle them off to become a kid's "my first gaming rig" for a family that otherwise couldn't afford it. Or a family that needs a Home Office computer to WFH that otherwise can't afford it. And the raffle money gets donated to charity.

The History Lesson: COVID-19 ...

During COVID, things like computers and laptops became valuable assets. All of a sudden, everyone needed more of everything. Everyone working an office job suddenly needed to be able to work remotely. Kids suddenly needed something in order to complete their schoolwork.

I did my best to help as many people as I could, as quickly as I could. But I found what was to be the biggest problem was ... "Marketing".

The Problem ...

Every Advert on every platform on every medium imaginable was "Buy This Device" (laptop/computer/tablet); it'll be able to allow you to do your work, and your kids get their schoolwork done!!

The only problem with that is that, due to "Supply & Demand", they weren't able to make these devices fast enough to cover everyone who suddenly needed one. Anyone with any stock knew this and put their prices up, most of the time by double.

The Solution

What I tried to do, or at least to the best of my ability, was to "upgrade" people's existing devices. Most people these days already have a laptop, computer or some other device, but it had become "old and slow".

What most people don't ... or didn't realise is that these devices were, at the time, old enough that they still contained a physical spinning Hard Disk Drive (HDD) rather than a newer Solid State Drive (SSD).

I paid £80 for a Samsung 250 GB SSD in April 2018; transplant that into any computer or laptop device, reinstall Windows with the existing license, or even get a new one from https://www.dlcompare.co.uk/ for about £5 and then restore the files from the old hard drive. Or the old drive could be turned into a second storage device, or put into a USB caddy.

The Result

This would remove the "need" for a "new" laptop that would have likely cost £1000 and replace it with a simple £50-80 SSD upgrade.

All because of "Marketing" having people believe they needed a brand new laptop that would be enough to perform video editing, rather than a simple upgrade for the average laptop that just needed Microsoft Word for homework.

2026

So what does that mean for 2026? Well, I want to take the broader idea of upcycling old computers and laptops that are now considered e-waste. Now, half the UK has been forced back into their Office environments, a lot of those home office machines, computers and/or laptops have been put in a drawer or on a shelf and have started collecting dust.

I want those machines!! I want those computers, laptops, tablets ... all of it!!

I want to stop it from going into a landfill site and get it recycled. Old computers can be reused. They could easily become a homework machine, or a WFH (Work From Home) office computer or a "first gaming rig" machine for someone who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

The How

We've been streaming quite a lot since 2018, a lot more during lockdowns caused by COVID-19. Even now, every year, a small group of us (Team Quack Attack) do a 24-hour Charity Stream on Twitch where we play a handful of games with silly objectives, and we've started raffling off prizes (Pokemon ETB boxes), and this year I raffled off an old RTX 2060 EVGA KO GPU.

We raised over £2000 (including Gift Aid)!!

I want to be able to find a way to do that more ... I haven't quite figured out the details yet; I'm waiting for some kind of epiphany, but streaming some PC builds, some sessions on how to set up "homelab" stuff and seeing about snowballing some momentum into being able to raffle away more upcycled tech that would otherwise be sent to landfill as "e-waste".

The Who?

No, not the rock band.