I think this is pretty practical actually. My last job was as a tech writer at a software engineering firm. The tech writers were assigned laptops because we had to be able to take notes at meetings, observe installations, take our documents to engineers for review meetings, and be available to work from home. My laptop went with me on a couple of vacations when my flights were scheduled before I got my documents handed off and ran a lot of personal software because it was there at tax time (TurboTax) or on vacation (DVD drivers). Ultimately, though, it belonged to the company. So at one point it got too old and I got an upgrade. It wandered around the company being used as a presentation machine or a starter machine for new employees until their laptops came in. Last I heard it was blue screening intermittently for a co-worker of mine.

Considering the costs of our other benefits: health care, three weeks of vacation, a work-at-home option, bonuses, options, and the like, $2100 for a laptop you keep and use for work for the next 4 years is pretty practical. It could replace a week of vacation time the first year.

Personally I think its a way great idea. I've had to work with laptops not my own for a long time, and they seem to spend more time, not less, being updated and such by the IT Dept., while I could do the same things in less than a fifth of the time, and maybe half the headaches.

If my company gave me my choice, I know which I'd pick in a heartbeat. I know, better than anyone, since I have to use it six days a week. I also know what limitations each system has, because I make it my business to stay on top. If my company would subsidize it, there would be no limit to how productive I could make the tools which are part of my daily life.

I'd agree that this sounds like a better idea than it really is. Beyond the tech support nightmare that other people mention, I like for my usage, surfing, etc. to be segregated nicely on MY own hardware.

It could be more related to my role as a nine-to-fiver, but the distinction between "THIS is for work" and "THIS is for home" is a big deal, whether we're talking physical space, cell phones or computer. I don't open my checking account from my work computer and I don't check my work email from my home computer. This really blurs that line in ways that skeev me out.

The article doesn't mention whether the standard workplace monitoring is in place on "your" computer. That would be a big dividing point for me.

I have to say that this policy has about as much "bad" as "good" about it.

It's tougher to support machines that users "own" (especially Windows machines), because IT has no way of knowing what changes may have created any given problem. Also, in the event that there's found to be an incompatibility between a user-owned piece of software and a "Corporate-mandated" piece of software, it's not necessarily easy to convince the employee to remove "their" program they installed.

The upside is that when employees are required to provide their own support, they do become much more cautious and diligent users. Most employees treat their own possessions with more care than the "company" equipment.

Long run, though, there's a reason for why the Desktop Support industry has picked up a bit recently. Companies have begun to recognize that forcing employees to support their own systems does sometimes (often?) result in significantly longer downtimes when something really bad happens.

IT has classically been a backwater for management, and a cost-center that the finance department would prefer to eliminate. One might think that it would be taken a bit more seriously now that everything in the world is digital and online and real-time and exciting, but I haven't seen much evidence that this is the case. There's hardly a day goes by without a news item about how data was leaked, or files were "hacked," at some major corporation which the customer assumes is being diligent.

During my management stints in IT, I found it *very* difficult to get budget approval for infrastructure improvements which would prevent problems. It was frustrating, but I never had trouble getting authorization to spend tens of thousands of dollars to clean up the mess after some long-neglected system failed.

Trying to place a dollar value on an employee's "day's work" is not at all easy, so when IT costs are fobbed off onto end-users, management often sees that as pure savings.

Citrix makes, among other things, software that enables "thin client" enterprises ... with one (or a cluster of) "thick" server and many "thin" systems connected to it that have no hard drive, and very few hardware elements. In theory and practice, the "thin clients" all run their software from and store their files on the server(s), so they do not need hard drives or lots of RAM or any of the other stuff that makes computers so hardware-expensive.

You can buy "thin client" systems for under $300. Actually, any old computer with a reasonably fast processor and decent system speed with an attached network card can be used as a "thin client", if it is set up properly.

By giving each of its employees $2500 to buy a complete computer for their home use, Citrix is saying, in effect, that their own employees don't/can't use their software, and that they are unwilling to set it up so the employees can use it over their VPN. Silly Citrix. This news story is bad for your image. It certainly calls into question your company's products and your confidence in their ability to do the jobs you tell the rest of us they are designed to do. (I would post a link illustrating how I came to this, but simply going to their site and reviewing any of their products would do the same thing ... they are ALL supposed to allow remote users to be able to work within the enterprise.)

Any company that won't use its own products smells funny.