Empowering End Users with Pre-Installed Software

End users of computers in the developing world often want to engage in activities that are beyond the stock software that comes with popular operating systems, especially Windows XP. But they usually lack the knowledge or bandwidth to find and download the right applications.

Making computers instantly useable

To empower these users, and reduce implementation time and costs, Inveneo has developed a Community Center Software Collection - more than 30 applications, including iTunes, Skype, QuickTime, RealPlayer, Flash, Shockwave, and solutions for typing tutors, editing photographs, audio files, and movies - that come pre-installed on request for XP-based hardware platforms.

This bundle of software and OS modifications is designed for a shared computing environment where there is little to no technical support, and has proven to be very useful for computers running Windows XP Home in rural and remote areas. Its available in English or French, however the operating system must be in the same language.

While this specific Community Center Software Collection is unique to Inveneo, its our hope that the underlying idea - appropriate, pre-installed software applications that make computers instantly useful to end users - becomes common in the developing world.

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Wayan Vota

Inveneo

Wayan Vota is a technology expert focused on appropriate information and communication technologies (ICT) for rural and underserved areas of the developing world. He is a Senior Director at Inveneo and is the editor of ICTworks

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Comments

reinvent the wheel

Submitted by Hapee (not verified) on Mon, 11/09/2009 - 04:14

This is already out there and spread around, it is not just installed software but well chosen and combined with training material produced by Tactical Tech also responsible for other boxes: http://www.tacticaltech.org/

Thanks for the futher resources

Submitted by Wayan Vota on Mon, 11/09/2009 - 07:19

Hapee,

Thanks for sharing Tactical Tech's work for advocacy organizations with us. That's a great addition to our focus on educational and community centers. Looking through the site, I found a link to NGO in a BOX, but I didn't see a list of what software came with that CD. Do you know what they have on it?

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