[ILUG] PCs for schools, MS tax and WINE

[Ronan Cunniffe]

Hi all,
	This may well be thoroughly debated somewhere, so somebody can
point me appropriately.  Otherwise, you may be forced to fire up some
braincells.

The short version:
	buying + building machines for a school and running Linux and WINE
on them.

The complicated version:
	It drives me to distraction of seeing schools with very limited
resources splashing out on state-of-the-art machines simply because that's
what's on offer.  School management is wary of anything without a
warranty, so everything has to be either brand spanking new or donated for
free.
	The donations to this school to date are XTs and 386-based IBM
bank terminals.  They have two major flaws:
1) There's a long list of things you can't do on them.
2) Kids know when they're sitting in front of a Model-T, and they're not
impressed.  This is make-or-break for whether or not the computers are
actually useful.  If they're old enough to want designer jeans....

*Three* major flaws:
3) They're prone to dropping dead when, um, nobody expects them.

So, why not buy the bits (scan, pcdirect, whatever), assemble and
*personally guarantee* the resulting systems for 12 months.  Install Linux
running WINE, and whose to know?  The real saver is on paying the M$ tax.

Has anybody done this (with a .iso to prove it, and save me the work? ;-)
Is there a difference between possession with intent to supply and
personal use?
Can some money saving wrangle be done by having the *school* buy the bits?
Does anybody see any complications?

Thanks in advance,
Ronan Cunniffe.

P.S. The machines will have to run certain specific educational software,
which is M$ only, so it's WINE or dosemu.  The software uses sound, so I
suspect WINE will be needed.