Home : Public Sector : News

Lane-Fox scheme to flog sub-£100 PCs

Martha Lane-Fox reveals plans to get many more online by offering cheap, refurbished PCs.

By Tom Brewster, 17 Jan 2011 at 11:36

The UK’s digital champion Martha Lane-Fox has revealed plans to make sub-£100 PCs available to those without broadband access.

Under the plans, refurbished PCs with a flat-screen monitor, warranty and telephone support will be offered for £98.

“Motivation and inspiration are still two of the biggest barriers [to people using the internet], but clearly perception of price is another big deal for people,” Lane-Fox, who was also one of the co-founders of LastMinute.com, told the Financial Times.

“We have an opportunity here in the UK to make sure we are achieving internet skills and usage as high as TV usage. We should be using our old computers and refurbishing them to close the gap in this country.”

The PCs will be made available at 60 different centres across the UK once the pilot scheme is launched in the coming days.

A nationwide rollout has been planned for later in the year.

The project will form part of the Race Online 2012 campaign, which was launched in July.

Lane-Fox put her weight behind the initiative, hoping to get an additional 10 million people who have never been online connected to the web by 2015 - not 2012 as the name of the project would hint.

She has also outlined plans to get millions more online by the time the Olympics hits the UK in 2012.

Email to a friend

Print this page

< Previous Public Sector : News Next >

1 comments

You need to Login or Register to comment.

Does she have any original ideas?

Nobody has thought of this before, of course. Indeed, I was doing this myself about ten years ago -- a complete system for £100. Is she also going to pay for the running costs (broadband?) and the training? Generally, old computers are large, noisy, and power hungry with old parts like hard drives and power supplies vulnerable to imminent failure. In my opinion (and experience) old computers are best recycled at the reclamation yard -- extracting the reusable materials in order to build, smaller, quieter, faster, and less power hungry new models. As always, the price of new equipment is constantly falling, concomitant with an increasingly rising specification.

By 6tricky9 on Tuesday Jan 18