I've been on both sides of this, and I can say with some certainty that the two biggest reasons for this attitude about hardware are 1) difficulty in managing a

I've been on both sides of this, and I can say with some certainty that the two biggest reasons for this attitude about hardware are 1) difficulty in managing a heterogeneous computing environment, and 2) the appearance of unfairness. Here's another question: why is it that execs tend to always get the snazziest new gear, not the people doing real computing? Argh.