Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/07/great-deal-on-the-kano-compute.html
…
1 Like
The fact that this generation now has its own de facto Sinclair makes me very happy.
1 Like
i got one for my daughter last year for xmas because she said she was interested. she hasn’t touched it in about 11 months. i’ve been asking her every week for a year (especially when she says she’s bored) when she’s going to use her kano. she just rolls her eyes. i think it’s a really cool system. what i’ve seen from it has potential. i’ve even gone so far as to make an account for me just to walk around and do some projects hoping to persuade my daughter to use it. no dice. :\
2 Likes
USB keyboards and mice are easy to find cheap or free, garage and rummage sales, the garbage, ask friends.
Likewise power supplies, since it’s 5v with a USB connector. Friends, garbage, garage sales. A few years back, after spending ten dollars at rummage sale for a TomTom One GPS, at the first garage sale I hit, there was the needed power adapter. I already had a bunch, but it was easier to spend fifty cents than dig through a box at home to find one. Sometimes sellers seem surprised that anyone would buy one, but meanwhile I’m stocked for the future. This isn’t the old days when every adapter seemed to be a different voltage and different connector . But even then I’d scrounge before spending good money. I once powered a Powerbook 1400cs by opening a discarded inkjet printer for the power supply.
I admit that memory cards aren’t as readily available cheap. But as density increases, asking around might turn up a card surpluses by higher density cards.
Most of the LCD monitors found cheap or in the garbage are lacking HDMI, though I’m hoping that the 28inch TV set that I dragged home will be easy to fix when I open it up. By the way the HDMI cables I’ve bought have gone from “dollar stores”. When I needed a VGA cable, I just watched for monitors on the sidewalk until I found one with a removable cable.
Stick it in a plastic box meant for food storage if you feel it needs protection.
Cheap Raspberry Pis are great, but negated by these kits that bloat up the price. What good is a “Maker movement” if it really means a market to sell things like this to? No longer so cheap, might as well buy a “real” computer.
If you want control, you need to be a scrounger. Which means understanding enough so you aren’t at the mercy of repackagers.
1 Like
The future will belong to those to who understand the past (the ideas, technologies, whatever) and can scavenge/repurpose it for their own ends.
Did somebody say Kano?
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
