These days its unheard of for a designer to seek out an old computer to create graphics on. Nearly all the people I work with want the latest and the best. Every week someone buys a new thing, a gadget or a game or an application. I am forever being asked to give my opinion on how cool something is or check out what this can do, I'm a bit over it. In fact I was over it at least 10 years ago when I realized that I was getting by on a system that was more than a couple of years old and software I hadn't updated for quite a bit. Its not that I can't afford "new stuff". Its just that I am comfortable with what I know and how its working for me. A bit like the old jumper my wife keeps asking me to stop wearing in public. I don't care how it looks it just feels great. Besides computers should last you as long as your mower. I mean when was the last time you needed to buy a new mower?. When was the last time you even got it serviced and if you did service it, were you tempted just to trash it and buy a new one?. It seems we think of our computer as a really important object, a status symbol and we can't be left for dead in the avant garde of the nerdy computer power stakes . It has to be the latest in order to give us some sort of superiority gap between those who don't even use computers and the rest of computing society. Its a bit of a snobbery really.
I have started using a new word in my vocabulary these days also. I am now referring to the computer gadget up daters as Stuffists. people enamored by stuff. Stuffists in my opinion are generally unhappy with everything the way it is. They are a bit like young children and their latest gimmicky toy collection. Its all about the one piece of stuff that no one else has been able to get their hands on. Stuffists also like to snicker about nonstuffists and that's a bit like children too.
Anyway this is not what this blog is about. At least not the stuffists part, I just had to get that off my chest. This blog is about how someone can become a computer illustrator without much money at all. In fact I would like to say its an attempt to help artists old and young, set up a computer for creating artworks on, for absolutely no money at all. According to an article I read in 2007 by Anita Hamilton / Endicott of Time Magazine, 500 million PC were junked in the US alone. It worried me to think at the time, that a percentage of these were still working but only trashed for upgrade reasons. So I began a personal research project to look into the possibility of creating a computer graphics/animation studio that only used free software and was entirely created from free sourced computers and monitors. I originally did want to achieve this in 2008 but as fate would have it the GFC and a new job in New Zealand bought things to an abrupt halt. But my research has left me itching to tell others how it can be done.
But let me answer the question in the title, is a free computer something to shun? . Well not if it still works. Even though older computers are less energy efficient than newer ones, the toxic waste they contribute to landfill is extreme. Not to mention the fact that as old gets trashed new gets made and even more waste gets created for the future. Did you know the lead in a single CCD monitor can be around 2.25 kilograms. To keep this out of landfill is a good thing, especially when the monitor is still in working order. If you give it new life you are helping keeping the planet clean. So what about when its a complete wreck and you do need another?. Well I intend on finding someone who will reprocess the parts and then get another old computer to replace that one.
