I'm in general agreement with Simon. I try to keep my ``personal'' stuff off my work laptop, but it's pretty difficult (especially as that machine travels back and forth and has also become my desktop at work).
What you can and can't allow obviously depends a lot on the kind of organization you're running. I'm at a college, and my faculty have laptops (and usually also desktops). The desktops are pretty locked down, and they don't have root or admin access, can't install software themselves, and know that if there's a significant problem, the machine might be wiped and rebuilt. All data lives on the server, or is on drives that they maintain and back up. In exchange, though, they get a lot more leeway with their laptops, including the ability to install whatever other apps they need, keep music or movie files, and so on. I've made it reasonably clear to them that if there's a problem that requires me to rebuild the OS, I will either have to wipe all their personal stuff or back up the machine and restore it, which will add many hours to the work. Thus far, that's working okay. OTOH, my brother works at a bank. Said bank, needless to say, has much more strict policies about what is and isn't allowed on their computers. Even with all the rules and really serious consequences for violating those rules (as in, ``You're fired,'' or even, ``You're fired, and the police would like a word.'') there's plenty of problems. People are people -- there's a limit to how far you can push them, and there's even a limit to how far it's worth pushing them. I think the key for Kate's problem is ``a culture that people treat company laptops as if they were their own.'' As long as that's the culture, you're going to have problems, and trying to force the culture from the top down may or may not have positive results. Claire *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Claire Connelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems Administrator (909) 621-8754 Department of Mathematics Harvey Mudd College *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
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