Great post on a prominent and interesting topic…

I must say that I have to agree with you that BYOPC will in itself have zero effect with regard to staff attraction or retention however the ‘choice’ of device will. Where you have a development team for example that say are looking to build products for say cloud platforms, you may find that they have experience using development tools that are OS X based and as such are less keen to work on Windows.

Similar to what John said, users of certain devices do bring about a certain type of corporate culture – for example with technology people, giving them any new shiny toy can boost morale and turn a sour culture into a happy one.

Another point I will make is that most vendors who applaud the BYOPC model don’t really understand the full ramifications regarding it such as tax liabilities and what to do if an employee destroys their machine. Sure, many will say that BYOPC is the employee responsibility but do they really want said individual sat on their hands because said individual can’t actually afford to replace the computer they just broke this month?

Cheers,
Jon Wallace
Director, Emerging Technology & Strategy
AppSense

I would add nadministration to your comment at the end regarding regarding management and security. being able to adequately track costs against proper and projects, tie resources to project management systems etc.