Parkdale Church of Christ - seeking God, learning to live the Gospel together

Parkdale Church of Christ uses computers extensively - this is hardly surprising since our minister came to us from a long career in the computer industry! However, most of the computers are old, recycled, or made up from bits of others, and all except one were donated. Consequently, we needed to break out of the classic spiral of needing a new computer every time a new operating system version came out.

This is how we did it:

1. We use free software, and especially open source software, whenever possible. 
   Software of this kind is often similar to commercial software, but lacks some of the more sophisticated features. Since most users don't know how to use these features, this hardly matters. Sometimes the user interface is not so good, and so the software is harder to use at first; but this is soon overcome with practice. Sometimes the open source software is better than the commercial software, being free of marketing-based limitations or an unlikely target for malware.
   
   The operating system on most of the computers is not Windows but Ubuntu, or a variant of it for educational purposes, Edubuntu. These are based on GNU/Linux, and are available free. There are many rival GNU/Linux systems available, but we use Ubuntu primarily because of its community ethos of sharing and respect for the other, which corresponds to Jesus' teaching of love for our neighbour as second only to our love for God; and secondly because it is not so different from Windows as to be unrecognisable to Windows users.
   
   Where we do use commercial software, there must be a good reason - such as a large old printer/photocopier whose manufacturer has not made a driver available for non-commercial systems. We are pragmatic about this, not religious! Next time we buy a copier, we will choose a different manufacturer.
   
2. Similarly, we use OpenOffice for all word processing (including our weekly newsletter and overheads for use during services), spreadsheets, and simple databases. This means that members who produce documents for the Church at home do not have to purchase expensive software, since there is a version of OpenOffice for Windows too.
   
3. We don't buy hardware that is more powerful than we need. The 8-page church newsletter, for example, is primarily created using a highly portable Netbook attached to a full-sized keyboard and monitor, and the same system happily copes with a 58-page tertiary-level research essay, complete with footnotes and diagrams. The industry likes to promote these devices only for very basic needs, and intends them to be used mainly with online applications through the Internet, but the reality is they are just as powerful as the normal laptops of three or four years ago, and can be found with large disk drives. Ubuntu is also used on the Netbook. It replaced a five-year-old Tablet PC that originally cost six times as much as the Netbook!
   
4. We have a total of eight old Pentium 3 computers that are used for teaching computer classes. With commercial software they would be so slow as to be virtually unusable. We run these as network-booting terminals to a more powerful, but still old, terminal server (it's got a Pentium 4 cpu, wow!) that runs Ubuntu as its operating system, with additions to support use as a terminal server. This means we are immune to most viruses and malware, and only one machine needs to be maintained instead of eight. The old slow terminals still run fast as far as the user is concerned, because the server does all the work. The user sessions are tailored locally to suit older people as well as children. Using free software for this project has saved us thousands of dollars in licensing costs!
   
5. Our services are recorded using Audacity on Ubuntu, which allows us to produce recordings in the free OGG format, and to burn audio CDs of our services for those who were unable to attend.
   
6. We use a wireless network to link the main computers together. The terminals are linked to the terminal server using standard cabling. 
   
7. The office computer provides internet content filtering for all the others to avoid embarrassment!
   

We have been asked why we didn't simply make use of generous charity pricing on commercial software. Here are a few reasons:

1. A practical reason: charity pricing wouldn't apply to software used by our members at home for newsletter production, for example.
   
2. An ethical reason: charity pricing appears to be the commercial software producers being generous, but in reality it protects their market share - and at the same time undermines the viability of alternative systems. This is anti-competitive, and strengthens the power of the few companies which control the computer industry. 
   
3. Another practical reason: charity pricing requires record-keeping so that the right number of licences are bought, and upgraded from time to time. Installation keys and online activation are required to link these licences to particular machines. We do none of this!
   

Contrary to the trend, this website is still produced using old commercial software! That's just laziness...