[jsymolon]

You don't need admin rights.

What you do need is a reasonable set of tools to be installed and a quick (under an hour) way to get items installed or updated.

What about a VM ?

Approach it from the tools use, do people use pads and pens or do they use Word?

[glynch]

The bigger the company the more difficult this is. Where I worked our workstations were locked down and required a package request to install software. In addition, they would not bother packaging a new tool if it served the same purpose of other tools; i.e. text editors. Doesn't matter if you prefer Vim/emacs/Sublime Text 2/Notepad++, we already have a license for a text editor you've never heard of before.

Depending on the company's hardware VM performance could be a real issue. You'd be surprised how many developer jobs are done on old Windows XP boxes. Big companies typically do upgrades in multiyear cycles.