Consultants: do you prefer using their laptop or your own
 

Do you prefer having individual clients' laptops or all of the pertinent files on your own machine?

does this exist?

I'm usually doing pretty short projects so not even a question.

You Serious?????? you should try to run my wife's laptop!!!!!

you want to look like a professional? get a pretty brand name machine with a premium screen and all bells and whistles needed and learn how to run it well.

also, keep all the garbage off of it.

I prefer my own, but some clients force me to use their equipment on their network.

I have laptops from three of my clients, plus my own Thinkpad. I strive to use my own. Most of the client laptops stay at my house, piled up in leather cases next to my desk. I try to figure out how to emulate each environment and place the needed tools onto my machine, but this can get tricky, especially for very large enterprise customers that are using sophisticated authentication techniques.

True integration can get pretty intense. For one customer, I have a unique Outlook profile, a VPN connector, windows shares, and customized encryption software for processing all inbound and outbound email.

I've thought about creating separate VMs for each customer, but even that won't work in some scenarios.

I do both, just depends on the client. I like my own for most things and they get theirs used when I HAVE to.

Nothing too complicated for my company - non-corporate devices cannot get an IP assigned to them.

Agree with others on this thread - like using my own unless forced to use a clients laptop to get on their network.

Have travelled with as many as three laptops before and it is a huge pain.

I dread having to use a client-issued laptop. I've traveled with two for significant periods of time, and it's just a major p.i.t.a. My projects are usually large enough that we work with client's IT staf to review our standard image, virus protection, software policies, etc., and get an exemption to plug into their networks.

All of our practitioners can now get aircards, so this is a bit of a moot issue now. Avoid getting into using client email, use an agent to auto-forward, or use a web interface, and there's not much of a need anymore.

I have a virtual machine for each of my customers which I do all my work for that customer on. It has their VPN client and any other specific "stuff" that I need for them and usually a copy of Office as well. I also have generic VMWare images with the common VPN clients - Nortel, Cisco, Checkpoint, etc so I can just use that if I am not going to be connecting to a particular customer enough to warrant a dedicated image for them. I do all my work for my employer inside a VMWare as well.

I've got a big box that I run everything on - 8GB of RAM, pair of dual core Xeons, etc.

When I go out on the road I take a copy of the VMWare images for any customers I will be working with while I'm out and the VM with my employer's stuff and I boot them up on my laptop and I'm good to go. When I get back I just copy the VMWares back onto my big machine and put the laptop away.

When I was an independent, I used whatever required. However, the work was seldom performed on my machine unless I was doing diagrams and documentation.

These days, I use the company asset to perform much of the work, unless the customer requests that I use their asset. Relatively inexpensive VPN's and terminal servers are beginning to make this a non-issue at companies of all levels.