bbforks,
well as far as the readers and handsets etc the company would buy these. As for the laptops i've seen this handled in a couple different ways. The company i work for now supplied me with mine. But i have heard from some old friends that their company would supply the laptop but make them buy it over a payment type plan. But as i said it all depends on the company you are working for and how they deal with it. As for the software that is needed? well thats a whole different ballgame. Alot of it you can get without requiring a license but there are some factory programs that incorporate the program into the computers identity and is locked into that specific laptop and cannot be transferred. As for paying for it? usually the company would or the customer would have to agree to buy it in some rare cases.