Tech executive Parikshit Arora had an unconventional response the morning he discovered that his office computer was no longer working. Rather than fixing it himself or calling in help from the information technology department, he discarded the device. “It wasn’t booting up,” says Arora, vice-president for technology at iQor, a company that handles call-center work for clients. “I didn’t even care to find out why. I threw it away and got another one.”
The same goes for most of iQor’s 11,000 employees. Why the seemingly cavalier take on computers? Two years ago, New York-based iQor ditched most of its Dell and Hewlett-Packard desktop computers and installed a fleet of cheaper, stripped-down machines that lacked hard drives. Also made by HP and known as thin clients, these smaller, virtually disposable devices leave most processing and storage tasks to a centrally located server. “We refer to thin clients as lollipops,” says iQor Chief Executive Vikas Kapoor. “If yours isn’t working, just get another one.” Now, about 75 percent of iQor’s employees use thin clients with files and software stored elsewhere. When a machine dies, staffers get a new one and resume work in minutes.
iQor may be a harbinger of things to come in corporate computing. While traditional laptops and desktops reign supreme in the workplace, accounting for the vast majority of employee computers, companies are increasingly willing to consider alternatives. Some are experimenting with thin clients in a bid to cut costs while many others are betting on netbooks. Employees are spending more work time on smartphones, while Apple’s Mac — once viewed as a machine for artists and educators — is wending its way into corporations. “We’ve got the most diverse offerings of PCs that we’ve ever had,” says Richard Shim, research manager for IDC’s personal computing program, which is now tracking…