I remember reading years ago that every machine in the building was linked into the render farm. So the person on the front desk had a dual socket, multi-GB RA

I remember reading years ago that every machine in the building was linked into the render farm. So the person on the front desk had a dual socket, multi-GB RAM monster of a machine, but only used it for light email/room bookings/contact management. But when render jobs were running, the PC was under 100% load. I'm not sure it'd work so well with laptops due to the battery life issue, as render jobs are presumably running 24/7. A quick search hasn't turned anything up though...