Well dont be offended, may be I am wrong.. but I have never seen a Big Company give a budget to its employee to get equipment for himself. especially when the employee does not know much about computers… I see that to happen only if it is highly required for the specific job the employee does. Them may be the employee is allowed to purchase something for himself.
I mean there are IS policies of all the companies, with certain certification levels, which requires all laptops to be of similar brands so that the company’s support staff can actually support it..
I know like Nokia, Cisco and IBM off course, they mostly use IBM/Lenovo brands, then some other companies use Dell all over the world. I have seen BAE to be using HP all over the world.
care to share which kind of business are you in, without revealing company details.