Let's say you have one employee working a morning shift, and another working in the afternoon. In theory, you

A Glance at the Costs Initial outlays are going to include setting up password-protected computer and developing user-specific profiles defining exactly which applications they can use and which folders they can access.     The costs continue because you must manage the profiles centrally and perform simple administrative tasks, such as adding and deleting users.     If you have several shared machines interconnected into a network, your administration tasks and expenses grow because user profiles include access to elements on their local machines and access to other machines on the network.

don't need two separate computers and can save some money. But there are several issues to take into consideration.

The first rule of computer sharing is: The PC isn't personal property. Employees have to understand that the computer isn't meant for playing their music, browsing the web or playing games.

Once that's clear, another problem you need to confront is maintaining confidentiality and privacy. when you have part-time help doing sensitive work, such as working on payroll, business development or storing sales leads in a spreadsheet, you don't want anyone else getting into those records. Even something as simple as using Outlook Express can get tricky since not many people want colleagues going through their mail.

The best way to address this issue is to give each user a unique log in and password. Among the advantages of this are: 

   Stronger security. Information on need-to-know basis is the lifeblood of any company.

   Sense of privacy. A sensitive approach to employees' privacy leads to a better working environment. You don’t want employees to feel they have no privacy at all.

   Lower costs. You leverage fewer machines, so you save money. And with those savings you could add more features or buy some  bigger monitors. However, there are still costs involved with computer sharing, as described in the right-hand box.