(Sorry for the philosophical thread-starting as of late...)

Reading Toonje's signoff, people started mentioning using their tablets at work. Half of this notion intrigues me, the other half mortifies me.

Obviously the tablet is a powerful tool in the IT arsenal, between rDesktop, IM, the network tools, etc., but do you *really* know you don't have any sort of malware on there? I'm running Ubuntu at home and I can't tell you whether I do or not. From a security perspective, you're bringing an external device past the firewalls, past the physical security, and accessing the heart of your IT infrastructure. I realize the odds are low that anything will happen, but people *do* win the lottery.

I've had lots of discussions with our Chief Security Officer at the coffee maker and he's changed my outlook on a lot of things. While I'd love to see Linux on the workstation, until the security aspects become as common as they are for Windows, I don't want it here. The concept of users bringing in home laptops and putting them on the network has always made my jaw drop too, and come to think of it, any of the bad worms we've gotten in the past 2 yrs have been due to this. As IT workers, putting unauthorized and untested devices on the network freaks me out.

That said, I could see it being handy for taking notes, etc., but for most office environments, dragging a notepad or laptop around is a lot easier. A pad of sticky notes is still smaller than a tablet.

So. What do you guys use your tablets for in the workplace? What are your security concerns and how did you address them?