Personal vs. work computers

[Tsutarja]

So for those that work in an office environment, or probably in any professional environment, how many of you guys have office computers/laptops/devices given to y'all to be strictly used for work purposes but nothing else? Or how about working at home on a personal computer/device?

How do you feel about locked down devices in general, as handed out by an employer? I know that this might not seem like anything interesting to discuss, but the thought just came to me!

 

[killer-curry]

My computer is mixed. Personal/gaming/work computer. You can do almost everything in this machine thanks to Intel core i5 750.

 

[donavannj]

Generally, using personal stuff at home for working remotely isn't the best idea, and I as an individual in the IT field am generally not comfortable with individuals using personal gear to work from home. It's a vulnerable point into networks potentially, depending on the software and platform used.

That said, I do use my home PC to work remotely from time to time, but that's only to connect into my work PC and then work from that.

Also, my phone is provided by work, but we don't really restrict those too much.

 

[Tsutarja]

I wouldn't want to bog down my personal computer with work stuff, but at the same time, I feel it's unnecessary to assign work equipment because it's just more for me to use/maintain.

Now if my employer gave me an iPad (or smartphone/other tablet) with work stuff on it and they allowed for me to use it personally, I'd be all down for that.

 

[donavannj]

Work offered me a laptop but it was after I had already gotten my dev environment set up on my own macbook, and I was like NOT DOWN for the setup again haha.

Plus I do non-work things at work sometimes (shh) and I didn't want to carry around two laptops.

There are some days where I really do want a work laptop, but then I remember that's more equipment for me to maintain, and then I'm like "I'll just connect into my desktop at my work desk when I need more power for work stuff".

I'm also guilty of doing non-work stuff on my work computer, but I know our web filter isn't terribly restrictive and that we don't actually monitor stuff since with 3 people and 180 users we don't have time to be monitoring the web filter logs.

 

[Maki-Nishikino]

my stuff though i hate messing around with a virus infested hard drive if i come around one i make sure i disconnect the computer i have a hdd dock on and isolate that computer from my home network till the virus on that drive is either not a threat or exterminated from the harddrive i wouldnt want a virus to spread into my personal file/media server

 

[Astinus]

There are four computers in my department's office, and they're really restricted. One just has the operating system for our store's pricing, and it can't do anything else but run that. The other three computers can only access the company's in-store website and applications. If anyone does need to use the Internet, it requires a username and password handed down by the store owner, and he's exceptionally stingy when it comes to handing that out.

It's really annoying to have such limited access on the work computers. I can't even accidentally hit F1 while in Internet Explorer because the Help page is blocked. Though I understand why it's necessary to have such limited access, since not everyone is computer-literate at my job. But those of us who know a little more about computers get frustrated because we can't always do what we need to.

 

[Maki-Nishikino]

Yeah, those kinds of viruses can be terrible if you get them on a personal server. That's why I'm really careful on my school network, there's a lot of people there that probably have a virus or two and haven't got a clue. I've been pretty good though so far through High School and College.

i have 2 wireless routers as spares when needing to isolate computers that are virus infected

 

[Xertified]

Holy shoot!

I would choose Work Computers cause' my PC is that bad. Pretty bad especially my graphics card ;-;

 

[mondays suck]

I have a work laptop, a study laptop, a gaming PC, a last-resort backup gaming laptop, and a broken laptop :p

I don't know, it just happened that way... my old laptop was too impractical for studying, so I bought a lighter, smaller, longer battery one to complement it. Cue one more year and it was also severely showing its age in recreational tasks (but still works today, somehow), so I bought a bigger and badder replacement... which overheated and died comparatively soon, and had I lost my warranty paper. Built a PC instead and later also got yet another laptop from the job.