The North Bellevue Community & Senior Center and Komputer Enthusiasts of Greater Seattle: Teaming Up to Provide Service to the Community

2002 Computer Lab Upgrade

Komputer Enthusiasts of Greater Seattle (KEGS) is a local computer user group that has teamed with the North Bellevue Community & Senior Center to establish and maintain computer training tools that will serve our senior community today and has the flexibility to evolve with future needs.

KEGS has provided the volunteer personnel needed to establish this computer lab and is committed to providing all the ongoing support needed to upgrade and maintain its efficient operation. KEGS has also actively petitioned vendors for contributions to the success of this effort. The responses to our requests have been phenomenal.

The computer lab was originally opened in 1999 and KEGS has committed to maintaining a facility that reflects the computer industries most current software. In September of 2002 we completed a major upgrade to the facility.

We want to thank the following contributors for their generous donations to the ongoing support of our computer training lab here at the North Bellevue Community & Senior Center. The development of this state-of-the-art training facility is a shining example of what can be accomplished with volunteerism and local industry's commitment to community.

Hardware Contributors

• The North Bellevue Community & Senior Center's North Bellevue Senior Advisory Board ~ This 501c3 non-profit group helped by providing the funds necessary to purchase additional memory and larger hard drives that were necessary to accommodate the requirements of the newer software. They also provided the money needed to purchase the security software "Deep Freeze" from a vendor who could not provide a donation.

Software Contributors

• Microsoft - Bellevue - Pacific Northwest District Sales Office - www.microsoft.com ~ Microsoft has given continued support to the training of seniors at this facility and when we requested their assistance in the modernization of the computer lab, their generosity was boundless. All donations included licenses or quantities sufficient to support all students and instructor computers in the lab. The donations included:
  • Microsoft NT Small Business Server 2000 with 20 user client pack
  • Microsoft XP Professional
  • Microsoft Office XP Professional Edition with Front Page
  • Microsoft Publisher 2002
  • Microsoft Works Suite 2002
• PowerQuest - www.powerquest.com ~ Gene & Linda Barlow eagerly assisted us in obtaining this donation. This utility software provides us with formatting and drive duplication software that is essential to the initial set-up and ongoing maintenance of the computer lab.
  • Deploy Center (2 each - 10 client packages)
• Intuit - www.intuit.com ~ Richard Katz of Intuit was instrumental in seeing that we received the accounting software "Quicken 2002 Home & Business" for every student & instructor computer.
• Symantec - www.symantec.com ~ Symantec offered a very generously discounted version of their virus utility which KEGS bought for the computer lab.
  • Norton SystemWorks Professional for our Windows 98 computers

Again, we want to thank all the contributors for helping us make this facility a real showcase of technology and community cooperation.