Is it appropriate to ask if I can buy a company's laptop for my personal use? Our code of conduct says that use of the company's resources for personal use should be limited and not interfere with our business, but I haven't found any relevant information for this case where I want to acquire company equipment (old or new) for personal use.
114k 65 65 gold badges 271 271 silver badges 349 349 bronze badges asked Mar 13, 2015 at 7:42 545 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 13 13 bronze badgesIf you buy a company's resource then it is your resource and not the company's resource anymore, so your code of conduct doesn't apply.
Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 13:12 The code of conduct may still apply to the purchase transaction, though (i.e. fair price) Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 13:33What are you really worried about here? If they don't want to sell you a company laptop, they'll say "no" . I don't really "get" what the question is, or why you're asking.
Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 13:46Are you planning on using the laptop for personal use in addition to business use? If so, you should ask your company about whether you could do that - some businesses may be against it.
Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 14:50Payment in Kind May be an issue. Depends on jurisdiction. Where I'm from it's the case that for an old (but not written-off) deprecated asset: valueAtTimeOfSaleToEmployee - priceSoldToEmployee = taxable , or for a new asset purchasePrice - priceSoldToEmployee = taxable .
Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 19:51Of course this may vary with company culture, but in in general it is not uncommon for employees to buy (or even receive for free) old company equipment.
Our code of conduct says that company's resource for personnal use should be limited and not interfere with our business
That should not be relevant in your case; you're not planning to use a resource belonging to the company, you're planning to buy it.
Nicely asking about buying the laptop seems perfectly ok to me. However, the company may have a blanket policy against this (for whatever reason), so be prepared to be told "no". Also, some companies lease their equipment, so it may not even be theirs to sell or give away.
Finally, some specific notes about old computers:
So even if they agree to sell/give away the computer, you may need to buy some stuff to be able to use it, or it may not be worth it depending on the price they ask.
answered Mar 13, 2015 at 8:32 11.9k 3 3 gold badges 48 48 silver badges 65 65 bronze badges"running a special deletion program is enough" Maybe, maybe not. The only deletion code that has sufficient access to clean the disk is the on-drive implementation of the "Secure Erase" command. So if that implementation is bug-free, software erasure is possible.
Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 15:36The licencing situation is more complex than outlined here in fact. For example many machines come with Windows licences (it's often cheaper to buy them that way, even in bulk) but the software installed on the machine might be a different version (7/8/8.1) or build (home/professional). That still might be ok as many Microsoft licences permit staff to use the software at home too. In practice it's rarely a problem, unless you want to wipe & reinstall the software for some reason.
Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 20:45@BenVoigt: Yes, that's what I was referring to. There's a nice overview on security.s.e: How can I reliably erase all information on a hard drive? - but that's not really relevant here, as it is not OP's decision to make.
Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 19:13@JamesSnell: "unless you want to wipe & reinstall the software" As I explained, the company will almost certainly wipe the system, or even destroy the HDD or SSD. So you probably will have to re-install Windows from scratch.
Commented Jun 16, 2015 at 10:40I think you are conflating two different things.
First you want to purchase hardware from your company. Different companies have different policies around this. For most industries - I would expect that if you were to purchase used equipment from your company they would run a multipass delete over the harddrive prior to the sale. You will receive a computer and will need to purchase software(including an OS and any Office programs you would like to use.)
Honestly - most of the companies that sell their used hardware that I know of overcharge for things like laptops and desktops. By the time they are at a point where they would be 'retired' (prepared to be sold) they're going to be out of date hardware wise and you will get a much nicer computer by buying a new computer. A 2 year old 'top of the line 2 years ago' laptop is, at best, comparable to a mid to low level laptop today. Plus a new laptop won't have been banged around, spilled on, etc for the last couple of years. Finally you'll get a warranty with a new device. A used device will come as is.
But I think your real problem lies with "Our code of conduct says that use of the company's resources for personal use should be limited and not interfere with our business" It sounds like what you want to do is purchase your current computer and use it for personal business along with for business purposes. Thats really the only reason why I would understand your desire to purchase a laptop from your company. From this there's probably some things to clarify.
Most companies are unwilling to allow personally owned devices to be used for business purposes. If you purchase a laptop from your company you will have 2 laptops - the assigned business laptop and the purchased personal laptop. This is because companies like to control what has access to their data, network and infrastructure. This is for both business and compliance reasons.
The standard 'Do not use your work laptop for personal use' also comes from this desire for security. Typically, in my experience as IT and as a Developer, companies put that warning in their code of conduct for 2 reasons:
1) If they ever want to fire you and need a reason they'll see you were asking questions on StackExchange(or whatever) and ding you for using the laptop for personal purposes. This is pretty uncommon in my experience.
2) The second reason is for the safety and security of their networks, hardware and infrastructure. If you got to www.totallynotavirus.com/virus_download.html and then plug into their network you could be a vector for data loss or breach. Folks on this board my or may not remember the ILOVEYOU worm. 50 million infections in the first 10 days it was released and over 10 billion dollars to clean up in the US alone. Folks would get an email with the subject 'ILOVEYOU' and an attached VBS script would auto run and infect their computer. Emails worms aren't as popular now days (the last big one I remember was in 2007) but the recent data breaches at large companies(Target, PSN, etc) show that there are a lot of dangers on the web for companies with sensitive data. The want you to not use your work computer for personal use to help mitigate these risks.
At the end of the day you'd probably be better off buying a non-work computer for your personal business. Additionally very few companies really care if you do some Amazon shopping on your work laptop(or hang out on StackExchange) now and again. However 'adult' or risky activities should absolutely not be done on company equipment. Delicately discuss with your coworkers and peers the reality of the personal use clause in your company.