A position for an operator that is equipped with all the facilities required to perform a particular type of task. A satisfactory workstation must take into account desk, seating, media-handling, and storage facilities and also lighting and other environmental factors such as noise, drafts, and glare.

A workstation is often a powerful computer system that has excellent graphics and a very fast processor, is highly interactive, and is usually part of a network. Such systems are much used in engineering, electronics, energy, and aerospace industries, and in universities. Applications include CAD, desktop publishing, and AI research. In data processing and office systems the basic electronic equipment would normally be a visual display and keyboard; however there may also be ancillary electronic equipment such as magnetic storage devices, printer, OCR, or bar-code scanner.

With the growth in the processing power of PCs most workstations are now based on PC hardware rather than dedicated hardware (such as SPARC).