A few years ago in the UK, the Government decided to give a tax break to companies who allowed users to buy their own machines.

The scheme went like this:

The company would arrange a deal with a supplier, the company would buy the machine and the user would pay the cost back out of pre-tax pay; i.e., you didn't pay tax on the cash used to buy the computer.

Also, the company claimed the Value Added tax (17.5%) back and did not pass that on to the user.

The scheme, called the Home Computer Initiative, was designed to allow people who would not normally, or could not affrod to own a computer to 'get connected'.

I bought my Mac on this scheme in 2005. I got a 2.3Ghz, Dual G5 with 2.5Gb RAM and two 250Gb SATA drives for under £2000.

Of course, what happened was that people like me, working in IT got cheap machines, and the people who wouldn't normally get a computer, still didn't bother.

The scheme was halted after two years.

What I see from this is that people who want a computer at home will get one, but there are people who don't want one and won't have one even if the company pays for it, and those people will still download virus-laden smilies and malware-ridden screensavers on their office boxes.

We don't lock our computers down much here where I work, beyond not making users local admins. That stops a lot of the nonsense by itself.

We don't mind too much if people browse the web during the work day, as long as the work gets done - it's like the sweet factory - allow the workers to eat all the sweets they want and pretty soon they'll stop eating anything but the minimum - We find that people don't browse all day, but do it at breaks and lunch time and sometimes even staying a bit later to look stuff up, or book theatre tickets or even do some online shopping.

Of course we do have a net filter in place to block objectionable content and it's very well publicised in-house that such content if found on a users machine is a serious diciplinary matter. Hasn't happened yet.