Lengthy Boot Time Vista Issues Taken to Court
The interesting thing is that it is not Microsoft that is in trouble, but the companies that use the Windows Vista operating system on their employees’ machines. It turns out that the employees of said companies spend prolonged amounts of time just waiting for the OS to boot and shut down; this has lead them to ask for overtime; when the companies refused to pay for overtime, the employees sued.
This is not the first time that lawsuits are initiated because of Vista-related issues. Earlier this month we were reporting that with Windows 7, Microsoft has decided to use just one compatibility sticker and do away with the 4 compatibility sticker nonsense that plagued Vista. I say plagued because the confusion generated by using so many different compatibility stickers landed Microsoft a lawsuit. And as we all know, the Redmond software company is not willing to give away money unless it does so to by means of Live.com purchase refunds.
Getting back to the issue at hand, according to Reno legal practitioner Mark Thierman, the employees are suing because they waste about 20 minutes each and every day just waiting for their computers to boot up in the morning and shut down at the end of the working day. What this adds up to is about two wasted, unpaid hours per week; over a period of three years for example, the monetary loses that these employees suffer is quite considerable. The most affected Vista users are those who work in call centers, in retail, and other paid-by-the-hour domains.
People have to come in early and make sure they are booted up by the start of the working day, because the built-in timekeeping software that keeps a record of how many hours you spend working kicks in only after the user is logged in. This is to say that if your working day starts at 8AM and it takes your Vista running machine 15 minutes to boot, you have to be in the office at 7:45AM. When you want to go home, you can’t just shut down and leave, you have to wait until the shut down process is complete and the computer is turned off.
A recent study has shown that the pre-Beta PDC Windows 7 version will boot in 27 seconds, which is not as good as the 15 second boot time that Microsoft logged in laboratory conditions. Perhaps the employers will consider using ASRock technology that allows for a 15 second Vista boot time.
Personally, I thing that all that wasted time could have been put to better use, such as taking a look at our Featured Office Time Waster series (Virus Killer and StarShine 2).
This is not the first time that lawsuits are initiated because of Vista-related issues. Earlier this month we were reporting that with Windows 7, Microsoft has decided to use just one compatibility sticker and do away with the 4 compatibility sticker nonsense that plagued Vista. I say plagued because the confusion generated by using so many different compatibility stickers landed Microsoft a lawsuit. And as we all know, the Redmond software company is not willing to give away money unless it does so to by means of Live.com purchase refunds.
Getting back to the issue at hand, according to Reno legal practitioner Mark Thierman, the employees are suing because they waste about 20 minutes each and every day just waiting for their computers to boot up in the morning and shut down at the end of the working day. What this adds up to is about two wasted, unpaid hours per week; over a period of three years for example, the monetary loses that these employees suffer is quite considerable. The most affected Vista users are those who work in call centers, in retail, and other paid-by-the-hour domains.
People have to come in early and make sure they are booted up by the start of the working day, because the built-in timekeeping software that keeps a record of how many hours you spend working kicks in only after the user is logged in. This is to say that if your working day starts at 8AM and it takes your Vista running machine 15 minutes to boot, you have to be in the office at 7:45AM. When you want to go home, you can’t just shut down and leave, you have to wait until the shut down process is complete and the computer is turned off.
A recent study has shown that the pre-Beta PDC Windows 7 version will boot in 27 seconds, which is not as good as the 15 second boot time that Microsoft logged in laboratory conditions. Perhaps the employers will consider using ASRock technology that allows for a 15 second Vista boot time.
Personally, I thing that all that wasted time could have been put to better use, such as taking a look at our Featured Office Time Waster series (Virus Killer and StarShine 2).
