While I get your point about building a PC vs making a rocking chair, making a rocking chair from scratch isn't really a fair comparision. More inline with putting an Ikea chair together, with simular efforts and results.
A more fair comparison to making a chair from scratch would be using those computers to start a network, service, website, etc.. that it yours and all yours, and that you can have your friends and family bask in the benefits, "carve your intials" so to speak.
That is also how we stop the MSM and Bigtech, by making our own Bigtech. Things exactly like this place, which I would hardly say is "almost like it was supposed to feel when you've really done something", infact I think somthing really BIG was done here.
And let's not forget about the dual ability to not just read, but also print on ballots, effectively allowing you to completely change the paper trail.