If there's doubt, then you cannot.

Don't do it.

Seriously, don't mix personal and work.
You gotta be seven kinds of stupid to think it's a good idea to get the company to pay for your FAP machine.

Nothing to it.

Depending on the tax code where you live, something like this might be required anyway, as it'll be seen as either payment or benefits.

So - go all out. Either have him add the cost of your laptop to your pay check as a one time bonus (bring a copy of the receipt so they can see the price), or have them buy the laptop and give it to you as a gift along with papers showing that it is indeed your laptop and not the company's.

Personally I'd prefer the one time bonus. I'm buying the laptop anyway, I need it, and I'm effectively getting a company sponsored discount with none of the drawbacks.

Exactly. We've done this at my company. Take the laptop or cash as part of compensation and there will be no legal issues because it will become a personal possession and not the company's. Get it in writing so there's no debate.

In the poster's particular case, receive the $1250 as a simple bonus. Have them write a letter backing that up.

Exactly. Your company has three options.

1. A payment in the amount of the computer. It goes not your income taxes as a bonus.
2. They transfer ownershhip to you. It goes on your income taxes as non-cash compensation for the value of the computer. It is your property afterwards; they can't take it back when you quit.
3. They issue you a company laptop. It remains their property; if you quit, you have to return it.

For 1 and 2, the computer is yours, and you can do whatever you like. Just like your car and your TV, which were purchased with money from your paycheck. The company has no say in what you do with the computer afterwards. You could even immediately sell them on eBay (though they'd probably be unhappy and demand the money back, and might fire you if you refused to pay them.)

For 3, you shouldn't do anything personal on it, nor should you install any of your own licensed software on it..

I don't know what Company you work for, but MOST companies force you to sign a contract at time of employment that basically claims that anything you create while you are employed by the company is legally theirs. Any code you write, any works you produce they could technically sue you for if you suddenly turned around and actually made a decent bit of money off of them. Yes, this includes things you write in the middle of the night on a weekend on your personal computer.

Does this mean they're going to try and claim your profits at the Church Arts and Crafts fair or try and claim they own the game you sell for $2 on your website? No. But they do this for several reasons. One is to protect their own asses... while you're busy coding at Adobe for their Great New Photoshop, you can't go home and use the ideas, even those YOU came up with at work, to create "Joe's Photomall" and suddenly turn around and start undercutting photoshop. Another reason is pure greed... if you suddenly have this great idea and write a 5kb Operating System that runs everything, it's THEIR great idea if you actually coded it while you were employed under them and _they_ get the rights to it, not you.

Yes, there have been cases where this has come up, and it is usually up to the (ex)employee to prove that they created the code or whatever either before or after they were under employment.

Just an FYI... I would check up on your contracts if you think this may be a problem.

I see legal questions in Ask Slashdot as more of a "What should I know before talking to a lawyer?" type of question.

[1] I am not an accountant, this varies depending on jurisdiction, for your jurisdiction this may be entirely wrong. Shake well before opening, keep refrigerated.

Do -not- use personal equipment for company use.

Okay, I admit I do it. I have a $20 keyboard and $15 mouse that I brought in. But if something happened and I never saw them again, 'oh well'. They don't store any data, and they have no value other than their replacement value.

A laptop? Are you insane!?

Take the $1250, the company now owns the laptop. Do your personal stuff on a computer you actually own.

KEEP THEM SEPARATE.

If he gives you money to buy the PC, who does it belong to? If it is yours, then they have no say on it. If it is theirs, then they might have a say in it.
Ask HIM what the situation is by email. That way you have a trace if anything goes sour in two years or so. The worst that can happen is that he decides that it is THEIR machine. At least then you know what the situation is.

I would think that if they are willing to give you that amount of money, they will also be willing to answer any questions you have about it.

A solution depends also on what rights you have on that PC. If you have admin rights, you could use encryption. As it is a Portable, you could use encryption anyway. That way when you loose the machine or it is stolen, the company data is secure as well.

Make either a separate encrypted partition for yourself or use the hidden part of Truecrypt for your own files. That way you can even give the sysadmin of the company the login, in case you are hit by a bus.
That way your data is secure and private, while the companies is secure as well.

If you do not have the admin rights (and don't want to hack them) then an external drive and/or USB stick can be the answer. e.g. at home an external drive for everything and a USB stick for on the road.

I imagine this is quite similar to employers who do mobile phone or internet reimbursements in that they are offering it as a benefit and there is no transfer in ownership (though there may be some assumption of increased availability to work outside the office). When an employer reimburses you for personal vehicle use, they aren't claiming ownership on anything in your car...

This is the most accurate I have seen.

I had for a year and a half a phone and plan which were payed for by the company through reimbursements, but in my name. When I walked out the door I simply took it with me as the company had no claim to it.

This is why companies favor blackberries and things with remote wipe functionality so it is not a danger.

And then you are held in contempt of court at a MINIMUM when you can't produce the data the company can prove you have, possibly jailed for destruction of company property. Your home and car are searched while you sit in a cell and it's all perfectly legal.

Oh and that email you sent with your idea? Better hope you can prove it came from some other machine and that they don't have another email with a time stamp showing you were working at that time.

The laws right now are NOT in your favor, no matter what you do. Judges are not incredibly fond of smart-asses who try and explain away such "losses" either. As someone who does work in forensics and testifies in trials as an expert witness for such things, I will go out of my way to protect the person and their privacy up until I see something like a pristine laptop coming back, in which case I just say "He's obviously destroyed evidence."

#4, Why not use a USB stick as a complete Ubuntu workstation?

Where the OS is loaded from or where data gets saved is irrelevant. If the company's position is that it owns the laptop, and an employee uses it to create something, the company can reasonably argue in court that it owns the created work.

The piece of paper that says "we reserve the right to search you" means nothing. Neither does the sign next to the pool that says "you swim at your own risk".

I visited a big tech company once where they shoved an NDA and some bs consent to search agreement at us upon arrival. I ripped it in half and we marched out. Some SVP came out to apologize and we had our meetings, sans NDA and without being frisked. We negotiated a hell of a deal too.