I broke work’s laptop & Do you have a separate laptop for WFH?

[largeprintagathachristie]

Do you have a separate laptop for working from home? Does your work provide them?

In January my own laptop, pretty old, died so I borrowed a work laptop to cope with the occasional WFH day. Never got around to buying another one just for my own use; I suppose it never felt urgent because I had the work laptop to access the internet during the weekend, etc and the cost of a new one was off putting.

Today this work laptop was knocked off the kitchen table and the gel stuff under the screen is shattered. Laptop is unusable.

I know my work will be ok about the accident and I will be able to ask for a new laptop, as I’m WFH until at least September.

I think they are scrambling around for policies on this stuff. The vast majority of staff are using their own equipment. This may change due to C-19 and increased wfh but we’re definitely not there yet.

What’s the norm? If work provide a laptop do you keep it just for work? Are there policies in place? We use cloud based systems.

I can see it would be “cleaner” to have one laptop that’s bought and set up by work, and is just for work, and one that’s for personal use.

In the meanwhile, I’ve got no laptop to work off on Monday morning, and do feel bad that the accident happened in my own time on a Sunday

[jmh740]

Oh has a work laptop he is wfh, he is not allowed to use the work laptop for personal things due to data protection

[NoHardSell]

Had to buy one for wfh
I only use it for work anyway as I don't need a laptop otherwise
It's really shit

[RaininSummer]

My work laptop is a crappy old thing and so slow. I am using my own whilst working from home. Almost dreading return to office eventually as the decrepit machine will be so frustrating.

[safariboot]

Most of our staff have a company-issued laptop. An accepted alternative that a few people use is to remote access their office PC.

There is however no rule against using the work laptop for personal stuff. But they're locked down so you can't just run anything on it.

[MissDollyMix]

Going against the grain slightly but when I was given my last laptop from work (pre Covid) I was specifically told “feel free to take it home whenever you want and use it for personal use” . Therefore I don’t have an issue with occasionally personal internet browsing, checking personal emails, helping dc with homework etc. I have a creative job so I don’t really have anything confidential on my laptop. I’m not expected to use a VPN, just my home broadband so work have no way of tracing what I’m doing anyway. That said, until Covid we never had a wfh policy/ policies on home IT use so this relaxed attitude may well change in the future! DH also has a work laptop that has a lot of confidential work on it and he must go through the company VPN when he accesses the internet so he wouldn’t dream of using it for anything personal. In summary, you know your employer and what their expectations of you are so it’s really your own judgement call.

[WeAllHaveWings]

@largeprintagathachristie hope it went ok at work this morning when they heard about the laptop accident..

[Weepingwillows12]

I think ideally one for work and one for home. However, in reality I am using my work one to access home schooling at the moment because my husbands work weren't geared up for wfh so he is using the home one for work. We are taking turns with the kids so if hes working and I need access to a laptop then I use my work one. This is relatively rare as I print stuff from my mobile and watch videos via the tv. It's mainly when we have lessons involving PowerPoint. I also use my work laptop for personal things like budgets in excel as our home laptops license ran out and I dont use often enough to pay for a new one. I probably shouldn't do that though.

[YouStupidBoy]

Same as other posters; personal laptop for personal use and work laptop for work. I have to be provided with a work laptop to use at home due to the systems I access and it needs to be encrypted. We are not allowed to access anything for personal use.

Even if this were not the case, I'd feel uncomfortable using work equipment in my downtime for personal use.