Stumbled onto this at Boing Boing and had a look at the original site. The idea is very simple. The employer provides the employee with the money to purchase a reasonable laptop, and lets them take care of the support and other issues. Or lets them use their existing laptop, if they so choose. Here’s the link.

I think it’s great! As a matter of fact, I was thinking of doing this with my next job – if the company’s policies weren’t too stuffy. I know first hand the pain of configuring laptops with group policies meant for desktops. Laptops are very different beasts from desktops. For one thing, they move around so much. For another, users often need to install software when they’re away from IT. Why hamstring their performance with a laptop that’s just been neutered by bad group policies?

At my last job, I wasn’t in charge of the business side of IT – instead, I handled academic IT – and I would cringe every time I saw a laptop that the business IT folks had touched – the users were constantly complaining they couldn’t do this or that, they couldn’t even print, they couldn’t connect to wireless networks, etc. The complaints were without end. Why do this to people? There’s no reason for it, other than the immature need to feel in control at all times… So okay, if you’re working with secret/classified materials, it may be a different story, but that’s a small subset of the work population, not everyone.