Free Geek

When my girlfriend and i arrived we were greeted with warm smiles and good mornings. We told the front desk that we wanted to do the orientation and we were handed the correct paperwork to fill out. We were then given a tour of the facility and it was clean and all the employees and volunteers had their safetly gear on and were eager to answer questions when asked. The facility itself was very clean and organized. They had signs explaining where and what everything was and located. Even had different colored tape on the floor to help guide a person. They accept donations and even have specially trained employees that will wipe any hard drives from computers brought in. Breakroom for employees and volunteers was spacious and inviting. There is an area that was available for open use of computers that you can sign up to use. The company also has a little incentive for the volunteers. Every 24 hours spent volunteering you have the option to get a free laptop or desktop computer. They offer classes to help anyone in the community learn their computer. Over all we enjoyed our tour and look forward to our volunteer time.

I am so grateful to have Free Geek in our community. They are a valuable resource and I buy all of my laptops from them. Highly recommend.

great place to recycle electronics you don't longer use

Unique thrift store dealing ONLY with computer items and electronics. Very knowledgeable staff who seem to be all volunteer. For sure most were younger than 40 something. We had been here several times before when we needed to update our computer systems and needed some place to gift our old stuff. The idea that you can volunteer somewhere and learn how to do computer tech work, well, if that's not unique I don't know the meaning of the word. Our visit this time wasn't to donate, literally because when you bring old equipment, don't bring your junk and you should bring at least a $10 bill to donate with the goods. What we needed this time were screws. Yup. Screws. Particular kinds that fit together a hard drive and another unit. The manufacturers must have figured out they save all kinds of money if they just omit the screws. Free Geek got us out of a bind with time and they kept me from having to go to commercial electronics store, like Be-- B-y and navigate their system just to find out that we would be paying outrageous price for four screws. Instead, we had a likable guy Chad. He was cordial, but not overly so. Uniquely professional. He was able to go in the back and find the exact thing we wanted. He wasn't going to charge us, so we donated a few dollars and were on our way. Highly recommend, especially if you need a computer and can donate your time for one, as well as find a geek society to hang with. If I were younger, I know I'd have been a regular. It's definitely a haven for those who want to learn Ubuntu and other OS's besides Gates's OS. Love the concept. Like the People and the shop's pretty cool, too.

Wow!!! The whole concept of the Free Geek store is amazing: recycling e-waste, installing free and open source software on refurbished computers and educating volunteers about computer basics! I've joined the afternoon tour and I would love to spend a few hours of volunteer work if I have the chance to visit Portland, OR again.

Scored a cheap laptop today at their parking lot sale, this thing is mint, no pun intend. No need to spend $1k on a new windows laptop or $2k on a Mac when a $80 used laptop performs the same (for most people’s tasks including mine).

Whoever does their QC is way pickier than I am. When I first picked up my laptop, I was a little bit skeptical because it had a note on it with a bunch of different problems I didn’t see on the eBay listing (my fault, not theirs, I just can’t read) but I wasn’t going to complain because I was buying a 60 dollar laptop, I knew what I was getting into. Turns out, everything runs completely fine and none of the hot spots in the display are noticeable to my terrible eyes. Staff was super friendly, and they’re still in kind of COVID protocol so I didn’t get to see inside, but it looked like they’ve got a pretty well oiled machine going. Will definitely be going back whenever I can.

This is a great non profit, it helps cut down on electronics waste and helps with the inequality of kids growing up without access to a computer in the home. They take all sorts of electronics, not just computers and computer parts. The recycle almost anything that's 'more than just a light bulb' - so if you have any old, broken, or excess electronics make sure to bring it here.