Personal Laptop
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Personal LaptopWow
This article really stopped me short for a minute and I had to re-read the title and then check the article to see if it was really saying what I thought. Employees owning the hardware, i.e. laptop, and then having the company install a virtual image, which would contain all the corporate standards and applications and would manage the virtual image.
On one hand it makes some sense. By moving to a virtual image, the IT department will have essentially "standardized" all the hardware, which would make it much easier to deploy patches, test, etc. No more 3 different versions of laptops to test and no more issues when the company decides to forgo Dell laptops and move to HP.
So, this Friday's poll is:
Should you use your personal laptop for work?
I should clarify a little. The article supposes that companies would give some sort of stipend to the employee for the purchase of the laptop and some minimum level of CPU/RAM/Disk that would be required. So let's assume that my company (or yours) would give you some $$ towards the equipment. What then?
I have to say that on balance I'm more against this than for it. First of all while I like the idea of having my own "stuff" on the laptop and taking it with me when I leave, I don't like the idea of "support". If I have to arrange my own support if something breaks, that's a pain. Especially if it's out of warranty.
Next I assume the company would provide a "loaner" while mine was being fixed, otherwise I wouldn't be terribly productive. It would be cool to see my whole image (backup is set up, right?) just appear on another machine, what if it's a less powerful laptop? Do I suffer? What if mine can't be repaired and I need to come up with $1k or $2k for a new one? What about refreshes? Will I be responsible if I work for the long term with upgrading my hardware?
Lastly I can see that while the image might be locked down, I could still install crap on the host OS that killed my laptop. Would I then be responsible for reinstalling or cleaning it off? I can handle it, but most people? Will we then get limitations and standards on "our" laptop in order to run the image?
I do like the idea of virtual images being used on laptops, but I'm not sure that having the employee own the laptop is a good idea. I think companies should just provide them and then allow employees to "buy" their own laptop when they leave. With virtual images there would be no corporate stuff on the laptop, no domain or other security issues, and it would be a nice gesture.
Steve Jones
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The challenge is that if you're totally dependent on you computer 24*7 like many of us are, we don't really want to have two computers, two email clients, files in two places, etc. etc. It's a tough issue with no clean solution If company policy is that I can't use company equipment for personal use, then I'm happy to use personal equipment for company use. I don't want my personal files available to company IS people for snooping, legal discovery, etc., and I don't want to lose personal info when I leave the company.
Having thought through all this, I bought my computer from my company for book value, and it's all mine now. I make sure it's backed up, and I own the software and the data. Sure, it would be nice if they paid me a stipend; that would help pay for the repairs that it needs.
PS: Same holds true for cell phones. None of us wants two cell phones, but the company has an interest in "controlling" the phone number that customers and others call. Companies should pay a stipend for monthly use and publish a "virtual" extension for me in the company's system that forwards to my cell.
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I am a contractor working at a couple clients. I had considered using a some kind of virtual pc with each client. I just haven't sprung the money to buy a laptop that has resources for that.
Russel Loski, MCSE Business Intelligence, Data Platform
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flip it... company laptop | Personal use VM Image. This way you isolate your personal garbage in case you change jobs and you don't hork up the base os.
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This article reminded me of an advert I saw a few months ago ( I cant find a link to it, perhaps someone can help me) for a flash drive concept which contained all your documents and your windows desktop settings on the flash drive. Effectively you could plug it into any machine and obtain your own portable working environment.
David
If it ain't broke, don't fix it...
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This is a severely misguided attempt by some small companies to evade normal business costs - even at the expense of non-standard equipment, increased technical support, and reduced warranties. Further, in these cases the employee is expected to buy software as well - operating system, MS Office, whatever.
These same companies expect to be able to reformat and cleanse the hard drives should an employee leave. They will often leave it to the employee to try to rebuild the computer.
Further shortsighted, these policies create fair employment problems when employees are sent to the field with unequal equipment.
Some (few) companies even carry this further to employees who work primarily within the office and don't go to the field. These employees can be asked to finance the company's computer equipment needs as well. Here the company may tolerate some (richer) employees adding better flat panel monitors to their desks, along with docking stations, real keyboards etc. Another fair employment violation.
These practices should make everyone question the judgement of managements behaving in this manner.
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On the flip side, it will make the users more aware of the implications of hosing their laptops.
To most users that have a laptop given to them by my company they don't give a crap if their 5 year old treats it like a toy because the company will replace it or get it fixed on the company dime.
I've seen laptops under boxes of project files, then these idiots wonder why the screen is cracked!!!!
I think if the company buys an employee a laptop, that person is finacialy responsible if the laptop is damaged due to misuse or PEBKC errors.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.– Albert Einstein
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I don't know about the rest of you... but I would hate being restricted to work within a virtual environment. We use virtual machines at work for testing purposes, and our hardware is more than adequate, but within the virutual environment, the performance is sssssllllllooooooooowwwwww, even when adequate resources have been alloquated to the virtual machines...
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Our small (25 staff) company was acquired last year by a sizeable corporation. We had programmers (employees not contractors) that were allowed to work "virtual" from home and come into the office 1-2 days during the week. Previously, these had workstations in the office into which they could remote into, as well as hitting the network via VPN.
The corporation allowed the programmers to continue working from home, but took away their office PCs and issued them laptops with certificates that allowed them to VPN into the network. Other than network access, they are not locked down or limited to what can be installed. They do have TrackIt installed to do ad-hoc licensing compliance surveys, but as long as it is licensed or freeware...
This has not been a big loss for most, except in the area of performance. Laptops historically (almost necessarily) lag behind PCs as to performance (processors, storage, memory, etc. So these folks had pretty substantial advantages using their home machines for company purposes.
Now they just use the laptops for work and their home PCs for personal stuff.
I still have 2 PCs and a laptop because of legacy OS/dll requirements, current production work, as well as new acquisition-related assignments that require that I travel to other offices.
As long as the company is providing the hardware, the pays the same...
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I prefer separation. The company has my equipment and I have mine <period>
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
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I agreed. The company should take care of its own equipment, and I will take care of my own.
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Hardware support aside, I find having personal access to all of the licensed, updated, and supported software that the company supplies is worth the bother of the other bulky programs/services that also are installed. This is especially true if the work-required pieces (software agents, inventory & key organizers, network monitors, etc) can be left turned off during personal time.
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I think this sort of thing can fundamentally affect the employee/employer relationship.
As an employee I have a duty of care for company resources. An employer has a duty of care for things like health and safety, salaries etc.
If I own the laptop then the company is in effect leasing me as a disposable resource.
Gaining an employee should be an investment. If I own my own equipment then the investment that the company makes in me is minimal. Neither one of us is beholden to the other so neither one of us has a commitment to the other.
Then there is the issue of differing family circumstances. You have a wife, 3 kids, and parents in nursing care so you don't have money for a swish laptop. Someone with no financial commitments has money to burn and therefore gets the best equipment. This stacks the deck against the person who stands most to lose in a downsizing excercise.
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"If I own the laptop then the company is in effect leasing me as a disposable resource."
Well, sure they are. In the US they call it "at-will" employment. They are renting your brain and fingers by the hour. And regardless of who owns the end point of computing services, that's what they are doing.
"If I own my own equipment then the investment that the company makes in me is minimal. Neither one of us is beholden to the other so neither one of us has a commitment to the other."
I don't think $3,000 for a laptop is that big of a commitment on the part of a company. Besides, if they buy it and you move on, they just hand it to the next guy (who likely has an H1B).
It sounds to me like IT management is trying to shift the problem of laptop support to the employee. That's typical short-term thinking. What's next? "If you want to share files, you guys should really run some network cables, maybe buy yourselves one of them-there server thingies." Bag that. The job of management is to provide the resources that we need to get the job done.
There is no "i" in team, but idiot has two. -
Great comments and some interesting points I hadn't thought of.
One thing I do like is giving employees a VM for their stuff if they need it. They could work at a slower pace, but have the use of the hardware without necessarily compromising the integrity of the corporate install.
And I agree that VMs run slow. I've had issues there and even on my desktop, with a separate drive for the VM, it's slow enough that I'd just as soon not use it. If this could be fixed, then VMs might become more widely deployed.
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