I wouldn't know a decent computer if it bit me in the ass and my son said they're not great laptops, but I took advantage of the giveaway and picked one up this morning with no hassle. Posting this in case others had not heard. Next Saturday is the last giveaway and I believe they're still accepting pre-registration..
www.stmaryscountymd.gov
Computer Giveaway in Maryland
- Thread starter NOTSMC
- Start date
KingFish
Nothing to see here
For a family of 4, 2023 federal poverty guideline calls out $30,000 and the giveaway says you cannot make over 200% of the federal guideline.I wouldn't know a decent computer if it bit me in the ass and my son said they're not great laptops, but I took advantage of the giveaway and picked one up this morning with no hassle. Posting this in case others had not heard. Next Saturday is the last giveaway and I believe they're still accepting pre-registration..
Connected Devices Grant Program - St. Mary's County, MD
60K for a family of 4 which I cannot see how someone can afford housing and all other bills making 60k.
I'm a veteran. That was all that was required of me to qualify. And there were a lot of people there from the Center for Life Enrichment - really good deal for them.
I don't think the computers were donated if they were partially bought with grant money (some of which could be from charitable donations) and provided by a contract from bids.
mitzi
Well-Known Member
I remember the powers that be talking about this during Covid. So many kids didn't have PC's to do their school work from home. It took this long for the grant money to make it's way to the counties/states. A little late when the schools were closed down for months 3 years ago. Typical government.
I vaguely remember that now and it's much more plausible. I think we can agree that the government on occasion wastes a lot of money - this was a good thing. Maybe not so much for me - the veteran thing grew out of trying to keep them in touch w/things that were available to them and obviously I have methods of staying in touch, but for the mentally/physically disabled and the elderly people in line today, good for the government for doing something beneficial for them.
Whelp it was free, I was in line less than five minutes, it's not my main computer, and for my purposes and I would imagine the purposes for which it was intended and the group of people it was given to; I'm sure they were all pretty grateful. Just a thought, but maybe you could donate your spares to someone who could actually use them.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Really? Maybe you are buying crappy Chromebooks (ones with bottom of the barrel Intel Celerons or MediaTek CPUs)? I have several Lenovo/Asus models that are great. They are faster then most Windows laptops for everything except gaming and maybe extremely compute intensive tasks like video editing. Yes they do "phone stuff" allowing you to use Android Apps, but they also support chrome extensions/apps and Linux applications.
Coming from this retired software developer that has used professional and high end "gaming" rigs for the last 30 years, a good Chromebook will perform better than a Windows machine that is 2-3x the cost in almost every task that average people use a computer for.
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
I'd have to check but - I know they were all name brand type Chrome books.
I have a couple iPads also, and I don't use them an awful lot except for reading at night or checking something when I'm still in bed.
I guess I don't think much beats having an actual keyboard and having the flexibility of a laptop or desktop.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
All the name brands have some poorly put together Chromebooks using celeron U processors which are just abysmally slow. Even worse are the ones that use actual tablet processors like the MediaTek ones.
But if you get one that has an i3/i5/i7 or Ryzen processor it will be very fast. And if you just don't like Chrome, for most of the name brands units you can unlock their boot loader and install Linux on them. I have two old ones that didn't get security updates anymore that I put GalliumOS on and I use one as a media computer for a TV and the other runs my 3d printer and laser engraver.