Comment Re:Nah (Score 3, Interesting) 498
No it doesn't translate well to computers.
Do you really want your financial, personal, or medical information on some random idiot's personal machine? A machine (maybe a laptop) that someone's kid uses to download all sorts of crap? What if the machine gets stolen while at the office? Who pays? What about the data? Can you mandate full drive encryption? How do you audit it?
Think of the legal liability.
No, no, it's not a good idea when you think past the initial $$$$ and allure of having a non-sucky work machine. Yeah, a good machine costs a few dollars, but compared to the cost of wages and other overhead associated with an employee, it is fricking stupid to saddle the employee with a crap machine that hinders their productivity. If a better machine increases productivity more than 5% then, as a company, you are insane to keep around a 5 year old machine with a tiny monitor.
We keep most of our clients on a 3 year rotation. The tax laws make it reasonable to do so. We track maintenance costs on systems, and find that as a machine ages, it really does get more expensive to maintain and it costs the company more in lost productivity than it's worth. With rare exceptions, our clients understand this. Tech isn't cheap but not keeping up costs more.