Starting a Computer Co-op? 26
spacechicken asks: "I am studying at a major university in Australia. As is the case with (almost) all educational facilities there are never enough computers available for students. So I (with some friends) are thinking about setting up a computer co-op at (or near) the university. In exchange for membership, members will get a small amount of storage and reduced usage and printing rates. The hope is to not only provide word processing/web surfing (using Linux, Staroffice6.0 and Netscape) but also access to various apps needed for serious academic work (eg CATIA, ProEngineer). We are planning to run standard PCs, with higher end machines if needed.
My question is, does anyone have any experience with this type of facility? Any advice?"
Think bigger (Score:2, Funny)
Secondly, you should sell all the computing power to the university. Put all of your users processes at lower priorities, because, after all, the university is condoning your actions, so you'll need to give them something in return.
Finally, don't charge any money to anyone for the use of this facility. Just appropriate their machine when they're not looking. Make all their processes have equally low priority on all of the machines and you'll be set.
Oh, and if you have any trouble with people complaining to you about their missing machines, don't worry. You can just send them to Siberia.