Flickr Find: What to do with 50 iMacs
What would you do with 50 iMacs? That's the question that a classroom of kids wants your input on. They have 50 iMacs (mostly G3s) that are running a mix of OS X and OS 9. They need some ideas on what to do with 'em. The first thing I thought of was, of course, a Beowulf cluster. What classroom couldn't stand to use a Beowulf cluster?
If that is too much they can always make 50 Macquariums.
[via MAKE: Blog]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Query said 11:04AM on 11-24-2006
They can give them to me. :)
Or, more realistically, donate them to a charity or orphanage.
Reply
Rinat said 11:25AM on 11-24-2006
With such quantity it is possible to curtail mountains.
Reply
stef said 11:26AM on 11-24-2006
Create a massive multiplayer tournament of marathon 2.
better yet, just create a massive game of marathon 2.
Reply
msr said 11:29AM on 11-24-2006
They should give them to 50 poor PC-using children who have nothing better. My first Mac was an iMac G3, and I only replaced it about a month ago!
Reply
BLACKOUT said 11:32AM on 11-24-2006
ship one to my grandad?
please
lol, oh well... back to ebay i guess.
Reply
Smivey said 11:33AM on 11-24-2006
They could always donate them to a school. . . Oh. Never mind.
Reply
Jason said 11:37AM on 11-24-2006
First, get the screens off the damn concrete floor! That's painful to look at.
The kids could use the machines for interactive class work, making media presentations instead of dioramas, sweatshop coding for larger corportions, etc.
Or, as Query said, donate them to charity. Tis the season.
Reply
Henry Mumford said 12:55PM on 11-24-2006
They can make games in cocoa and awesome slideshows in hyperstudio. That's what me and my friends always did.
Reply
Query said 1:02PM on 11-24-2006
@Henry Mumford:
And while they're at it, they can learn to hack into their school's mainframe! That's.. um.. fun.
Reply
profscott said 1:38PM on 11-24-2006
What did they replace these iMacs with (please don't let it be PCs...)? Knowing what the new machines are could change the way these old machine are repurposed.
Reply
James Whited said 2:24PM on 11-24-2006
I'll take one of those keyboards, preferably in Indigo (to match my old iBook) But mainly because I want an older MacPro style keyboard with black keys, and iMac keyboard would work.
Reply
Chaz said 2:30PM on 11-24-2006
I would love to have some of those iMacs to startup a project I wanted to do here locally. It would allow middle and elementary aged students to create their own movie from scratch. I figure the iMacs that first shipped with iMovie would be good enough for the project. Of course, I would need more than a few good iMacs to sustain the project.
Yeah, just donate them.
Reply
Ron Martinez said 2:57PM on 11-24-2006
There are many kids who have no opportunity to put their hands on a keyboard, much less one connected to a Mac capable of running iLife apps.
Suggest the school visit this Website (founding sponsors include Yahoo!, AOL, and Cisco). At the bottom of this page there are links to organizations accepting non-cash donations.
http://www.networkforgood.org/donate/
Change one life, and you change the world!
Ron
Reply
yatesy said 3:02PM on 11-24-2006
how about taking the newer ones and stripping the older machines of thier ram (if applicable) and putting them in some of the classrooms for specific resources like reading and math help? i wish i had that sort of thing when i was in school.
Reply
Bernie said 4:08PM on 11-24-2006
Do weather modeling, like hurricane prediction models (Can you tell I live on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico?)
Reply
bootle said 4:40PM on 11-24-2006
Run seti@home? Or set up a bunch of projects through BOINC:
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Reply
Joshua Whitver said 6:00PM on 11-24-2006
eBay 'em and buy new iMacs with the money.
50 G3 iMacs = 10 C2D iMacs if they do well on eBay.
Reply
Dar the Monk said 5:33PM on 11-24-2006
Create a stacked art project. Have the screen show some image (possibly of the school sports, students doing things such as reading [could be used as proof they do read], or historical figues for the month's lesson). Or get the nerds together and have some sort of networking system created by them. (An After School Project to show the athletes that the nerds will inherit the earth.)
Reply
The Peter Files Blog said 5:54PM on 11-24-2006
Why not sell them on ebay and use the proceeds to buy something for the classroom. Not sure what each would bring but I bet that if you set them up as a 10 day multi-auction with a $15-25 minimum you would do pretty well.
50x$20=$1000 and you might get more. Check the average price for each model on ebay to get a sense of what you might get.
You might also just network them to provide your school with extra file storage capacity.
Do get the screens off the floor if they are actually touching it.
Or have a school sale ask for donated used items from the community and use all proceeds for school computer labs.
Good luck.
Peter, Editor in Chief
The Peter Files Blog of Comedy
Got Snort Your Milk Out Funny?
Http://ThePeterFiles.blogspot.com
Reply
Rick VonHuben said 6:50PM on 11-24-2006
My foundation has donated over 300 Macs to schools and individuals over the last year, everything from PM 5500's to G4 Towers, but mostly iMacs.
As far as donations go, I have found that most people just want to be able to do the basics, like browsing the net or word processing (AppleWorks6), and for that, the iMac 400's (which seem to be most of what is in the picture) work just fine.
In schools that have recently upgraded to the latest Mac hardware, many have lost their ability to utilize some of the most popular games and educational software, and have chosen to dedicate older iMacs as OS8.6 or OS9.2 workstations.
Reply