This is a concept in corporate/government computing environments. The intent is to minimize support costs by providing a uniform platform for
IT to support.
Most major computer manufacturers (Dell, IBM, and HP for example) have a line (or several) of managed workstations, where they guarantee that the hardware will not change for the next 18-24 months, so that businesses can be assured that their install images will be good for a long time and that they won't have to worry about hardware inconsistencies from purchase to purchase.
Obviously, having identical hardware in all desktops severely reduces the size of the knowledge base needed to maintaint them.
An example would be a computer manufacturer offering a 1.2G PIII with 512M RAM, a 40g EIDE drive, 32M AGP graphics card, 40x CD drive, and a 10/100 NIC and guaranteeing that for the next two years, anytime your company purchases that Workstation 2300-VMW it will contain the exact same hardware. Managed workstations are not cutting edge, they are all about manageability.