I work at a engineering company even bigger than IBM, and what we have here is crazy: There is a corporate Windows network and all computers come pre-damaged w

I work at a engineering company even bigger than IBM, and what we have here is crazy: There is a corporate Windows network and all computers come pre-damaged with a special "Corporate Image" that we are all obligated to run: it's Windows XP with tons of stuff specific to the company: it even keeps a special wallpaper along with the screensaver that you cannot change. And, of course, there are plethora of daemons running: spying on what you do, anti-viruses, etc. And this image won't run under VM. Well... these beautiful and powerful workstations that we get from the company aren't really used by engineers: they sit in the dark corners of our offices only to be used to read "corporate email" once a day. Everyone is either on MBP+OSX or ThinkPad+Ubuntu like me, connected to our own "engineering network" we built for ourselves with our own internet gateway, using gmail and IM to communicate. From what I hear, AMD in Austin runs exactly the same way. This is probably why their CPUs suck lately. This truly is pathetic. The price you pay for being acquired.