Getting to 21st century IT - User-owned PCs?

In this week's Keep the Joint Running, ("Getting to 21st century IT," 3/3/2008), I mentioned a radical approach:Correspondent Richard Resnick provided the most extreme suggestion: No corporate-owned PCs at all. Let employees buy their own -- whatever they think they need to do their jobs. It's Nicholas Carr's vision in reverse: Only central IT remains. Employees take over ownership of the periphery, including re

In this week's Keep the Joint Running, ("Getting to 21st century IT," 3/3/2008), I mentioned a radical approach:

Correspondent Richard Resnick provided the most extreme suggestion: No corporate-owned PCs at all. Let employees buy their own -- whatever they think they need to do their jobs. It's Nicholas Carr's vision in reverse: Only central IT remains. Employees take over ownership of the periphery, including responsibility for their own PC support.It's an intriguing alternative, and not one easily envisioned. Certainly, the nature of the protections IT would institute would be very different given the change in boundary. I leave the specifics as an exercise for the reader.

This is your chance. What do you think of the idea ... not for production staff like call center agents, of course, but for travelers, analysts, developers and so on.

Comments, anyone?

- Bob