Why do companies give developers junk machines? Compared to hardware, software developers are quite expensive. A really nice PC that costs $3000 might sound like overkill for a $60k a year developer, but it only comes to 5% of their salary. A $5000 laptop for a developer who makes $100k per year is still only 5%. To get the most out of your developer investment, give them the best machine money can buy. If you give them a $1000 laptop, you will save money on hardware, but the developer will be sorely underutilized. The developer will spend most of their time waiting on tasks to finish or fighting problems on the machine so they get their work done. Giving a developer a cheap machine not only lessens their productivity, it also lowers their morale. Developers want to get code written, solve problems, and fix bugs as quickly as possible. Nothing frustrates them more than waiting on a slow machine to compile their code or run the newest version of a program. Just think how productive they can be with a machine they never have to wait on. A machine with more disk space, memory, and cpu power than they have ever had in their lives. Their productivity will go up, morale will go up, and the company will get a lot more out of its $60k to $100k investment than they ever dreamed.