The idea is that you side at your computer, like a regular day at the office, and work on a given problem. You have all the resources you normally would (yes, you can Google stuff). Also you'll have a "colleague" - the interviewer - sitting at your side and discussing what you're doing. The goal is not to finish the problem, but to access how you work and how you think.

 

This sounds great to me. Just sitting at a computer reduces a lot of the stress a whiteboard would bring. In a computer we're in our own domain and, as Rod testifies, most programmers love it.

 

You can read it in more detail on Rod's blog "Absolutely No Machete Juggling": A Different Kind of Technical Interview.