work machine

The computer you use at work. There are two major types of work machines:

• The really expensive work machine that you could never possibly afford. Having more disk, memory, and screen size than you could ever need, it beckons you and makes you want to sit in front of it. Obviously your employer has a deep wallet and wants to keep its geeks comfortable.
• The really crappy, four year old computer that's 1/5th the speed of your home machine. It generally runs a crappy OS and crashes all the time. In this case, your employer is penny pinching to the point that it believes employees don't deserve decent equipment.

Some employers don't care about you installing your own OS on your work machine, but most do and force you to run Windows. Luckily, my boss is an awesome UNIX geek who would probably think very low of me if I decided to do something as idiotic as installing Windows on my work machine.