FAQ

Laptops are donated to schools registered with The Laptop Drop. Really the only requirement is that they must be used for the tamariki in an education setting and requested by a teacher or school leader. We are not education specialists and so want to leave the details around the what and how to the people who are providing our children’s education. Some recommended approaches for schools/kura are: extra devices in classes, loan laptops for students for the year or giving them directly to the students/families.

Register anyway, we understand that it may be weeks or months before you are refreshing your laptops. All we hope is that when you do, you give the ones that you don’t need any more to a school/kura.

Sadly no, but if you talk to a teacher they can register and the issue can be solved that way. There are a number of other organisations supplying devices directly to children.

No sorry, we only take well-functioning laptops. Neither we nor the schools/kura are set up to repair laptops.

Well-functioning laptops of any type, ideally reformatted with the original operating system. All high spec laptops go to secondary schools for design, photography, art or technology and the lower spec laptops are suitable for primary or junior schools to be used as chrome books.

The Minimum ChromeOS spec is:

RAM: 4 GB.

Internal storage: 16 GB.

Bootable from a USB drive.

BIOS: Full administrator access

About every three years most IT developers request or require a new, usually high spec, computer. After this time, laptops are fully depreciated and so have no book value for the company anymore. We can’t speak for every company, but from experience managing engineering teams, we would often store them for a “just in case” scenario in a cupboard. After spending a couple of years unused in the cupboard, the laptops would be sent away for recycling. Instead, during this time they could have been used in schools/kura where there is an actual need.

We are not a registered charity and we don’t accept monetary donations.

However, there are other ways you can help. Some laptops do not come with chargers so if you don’t have laptops but want to give your support, we can provide you with a weblink to the chargers needed and the school/kura address to send them to. Some schools/kura also have a lack software and we are happy to introduce you to them. They can provide donation receipts for this.

Otherwise donate to KidsCan https://www.kidscan.org.nz/donating-to-kidscan/

The website and fixed costs are funded by the team at ResolvePay see www.resolvepay.co.nz

The Laptop Drop is a really streamlined operation that fortunately doesn’t need lots of volunteers. If you know of any companies that are keen to get involved, or schools that require laptops, we would love you to send them our way. At this time though, we don’t need a team of volunteers. We appreciate your interest!

Great, let us know and we’ll try to find a school/kura that would gratefully accept them.

Mmmm depends on the setup in each school, but generally speaking 20-30 extra laptops in a school with a BYOD policy will make a huge impact.

This doesn’t mean a single company needs to donate this many laptops. Even if you only have 1 or 2 to spare, this can make a huge difference in the lives of children who need them.

Sure, we just want to improve access to technology. If a company wants to create a long-term relationship with a single school that’s great. If you need an intro to a school let us know.

During the school holidays, Jono (in tech) walked his dog named Takkie through Whangaparāoa College. Takkie would quite often play with another dog called Shire who happened to be owned by another Jono who happened to teach at the college. As normally happens with dogs, they played and the Jono’s talked. One day, the conversation centred around tech in schools and how students were struggling because their devices could not run the software needed for their course. Jono (in tech) decided to see if he could help and that week he sent emails to three companies. Mark Heine, from EROAD, emailed back offering to help and a week or two later Jono (teacher) had four laptops for his design students. Jono (in tech) thought “That was easy!” and sent more emails...and more laptops came. Finally, multiple people told Jono (in tech) to set up a website. Aaron Ward from AskNicely came up with a name and here we are...