What’s the most cost-effective way for a startup to outfit employees with computers and software?

by Naomi Kokubo, Editor of Founders Space

Every founder wants to save money at the beginning, and great way to do this is to rejuvenate old PCs. You can get your staff up and running at virtually no cost by taking an old PC and breathing life back into it.

I did this by using Ubuntu, the open source Linux OS. It’s fantastic! It’s free. And it gets more mileage out of an aging computer than anything else I’ve tried. I had a laptop that could barely run Windows XP, let alone Vista or Windows 7, but when I switched to Ubuntu, it was like brand new. It flew! So don’t trash your old hardware, just reformat it.

Go see Ubuntu

Also, no reason to spring for brand new netbook, which is basically the same as an old PC. You can make your ancient laptops into netbooks in just 30 minutes.

And if you’re a true entrepreneur, every intern, biz dev and marketing associate in your office will be using Ubuntu along with Open Office, Gimp, Gmail, etc.