BC Digital Divide is very proud to have recently helped out a group of special refugees from Burma. Known as the Karen People, their story is a tragic one. But Canada is helping out by accepting them as refugees and many are resettling into the BC community of Langley. Our techs out there, Stan & Trevor, worked with The Karen's contact person, Sharon, to get each refugee family a perfectly functioning refurbished computer!

If you would like to find out more about our new neighbours and how you can help out, please click here.

BC Digital Divide's long standing policy has been that our mission ends once we've provided a perfectly working computer to a recipient. Put another way, if there is something clearly wrong with it right from the get go then we will resolve the problem. Beyond that though we are simply not in a position to resolve ongoing problems. But problems always arise with everyone's computer!

To help people out, long ago we identified a number of techs who are willing to work at reduced hourly rates to resolve computer issues. But there's something new . . .

As regular visitors to our website have known, for the past two months we've been without any computers to donate. But thanks to a very generous donation by Pivotal Software yesterday, we now have a new injection of desktop computers. They'll soon be refurbished and ready to go. So if you're unable to purchase a computer on your own then please do apply for one from us, preferably by doing so directly on our site!

Back in the old days of personal computing there was a product called "Lotus Symphony" that competed head to head with Microsoft Office as the business suite of choice. Some of us actually used it for a few years and thought it was absolutely superb! Fast forward to 2009 and Lotus Symphony is now available for FREE from IBM.

Though all BCDD computers come equipped with Open Office, which is a fine application too, users might want to try downloading a copy of Symphony and giving it a try too!

Danny Durand is a 19 year old Computer Science student in Aguascalientes, Mexico. He frequently visits Vancouver and is a big supporter of BC Digital Divide. He has agreed to answer questions posed by BCDD Recipients, in the same spirit as is done at Yahoo Answers. Whenever necessary he will seek advice from the BCDD techs.

If you have a question about your BC Digital Divide computer or the software on it then please send your question to AskDanny@BCDigitalDivide.org. Please be as precise as possible, providing as many facts as are necessary to resolve the problem. He will do his best to answer your question in a timely manner. The most useful questions & answers will be published below.

If a computer you receive from us ever requests a password then try entering "bcdd" (without the quotation marks). If that doesn't work then try "BCDD". Once you've logged in then go into the Users section of the Control Panel and reset the password to something else of your choosing.

All BC Digital Divide computers have had AVG Free Anti-Virus software installed on them. Version 7.5 of this software expires on May 31, 2008. To get Version 8.0 of the software, simply go here. All you need to do is download the update, run it, and it will automatically replace the older version.

Dear BC Digital Divide:

I am doing my homework on the new computer you provided me. My eyes are almost swollen shut from crying. I was so worried that it would become necessary to suspend my education that I have waited so long to achieve. I was becoming really scared. Then my friend found out about your generous service and gave me the information to contact you. I cannot thank all of you enough. I intend to catch up in school and succeed!

Mary Helen