This works, but only for simple environments. Given a work environment where you have a choice of: a) prepared environment with all application dependencies available and a tested-by-everyone, one-click-install/update on a bad system, or b) preferred system, but you have to do all of that from scratch yourself... Sometimes the reasonable answer is "a", even if you're allowed to do "b" (on your own time of course)

I've always been a b guy, and it's helped me understand how things work. One time, I joined a company, and two weeks after joining, poking around with a weird custom machine setup, I found that the machine was running a world-writable batch file as SYSTEM upon boot. Who knows how long this huge gaping security hole would have gone unnoticed if I hadn't felt compelled to poke around with Cygwin?

I asked for both a and b.

I could make do with an older computer for Office and Outlook.