Why you need a personal laptop

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 closed, seen from above.

Yep, if my employer gave me a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, I’d want to use it all the time too. Don’t do it! | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It’s a decision that may seem like a no-brainer. You’ve got a new job, and they’ve just given you a brand-new ThinkPad. Perfect, you think to yourself. It’s about time I got rid of that10-year-old MacBook Air.

I’ve been there. Surveys have shown that over half of workers use work-issued devices for personal tasks — whether sending personal messages, shopping online, accessing social media, or reading the news. The prospect of using your work laptop as your only laptop — not just for work, but also for Netflixing, group chat messaging, reading fanfiction, paying bills, and emailing recipes to your mom — is understandably tempting, especially for folks who work from home. Keeping work tasks and personal tasks in one place may feel like...