“That was like a trigger for me and I just thought, ‘you b******s’,” Allan said.
He received his first batch of laptops from EIT earlier this year. It took him a “fair bit of time” to get it right initially, but he can now manage about five laptops an hour.
Saved laptops are fitted out with new operating systems Zorin or Bluefin and have a similar feel to a Chromebook or Android tablet.
Allan said he had flipped about 30 laptops so far.
He was motivated to start an e-waste recycling initiative in Tairāwhiti to keep it in the community.
E-waste recycling facilities were located across the country, but were outside the region and did not return directly to Tairāwhiti, he said.
The price point was also intentional – a Saved laptop costs about $100.
“It’s got to be accessible. We’ve got massive digital inequity issues here.”
Allan said feedback from recipients had been great.
A Turanganui-a-Kiwa Activity Centre staff member told him she was “stoked” with the laptops.
“She’s just rapt that she’s got what doesn’t feel like someone’s leftovers. She feels like she’s got machines that’ll work well for them for at least several years.”
Allan, who is married with three children, operates Saved out of his Gisborne home and garden shed.
His appreciation for repurposing old with new is scattered throughout the house. A collection of vintage furniture sits next to modern art and a stacked CD collection.
“Tinkering and getting the most of things and customising things was always part of me,” he said.
Allan wants Saved to go beyond refurbished laptops; he hopes to build a movement.
The initiative has three components – reimaging laptops, developing community partnerships and building a resilient technologies qualification.
“My big thing is I want this region to be resilient.”
He hopes to achieve that by developing a qualification in resilient technology. The qualification would teach skills such as restoring and reimaging computers, running AI locally and digital fabrication.
“We’re all getting reliant on big tech, whether that’s Microsoft or Anthropic or OpenAI or Google. These things have all become services. We’re renting them and they get more and more expensive,” Allan said.
“At the same time you’re expected to be proficient in these services to get a job out there. It’s really unfair. How can we train young people, almost like a trade, to be resilient technologists … [so] they cannot be locked into these giants?”
The next step for Saved is securing additional supply lines for computers and developing the community aspect – Allan likes the idea of a hub similar to computer clubs of “the old days”.
“I’m not someone who’s personally motivated to make a huge business, make loads of money,” he said.
“It was really [about doing] something here that perhaps just sustains us while providing value to the community.”