Employees are suing for unpaid overtime resulting from a lengthy boot time of Windows Vista according to The Register.

A number of lawsuits have resulted against major US companies, but primarily call centers are the worst offenders. It seems that employees use time-keeping systems in their PC’s and can not official clock in for work until their computer has fully booted – in some cases taking as long as 15 minutes. The same time lag is also present when employees shut down their machines at the end of they day, accounting for a total of around 2 hours a week of unpaid time.

Total damages could run into millions of dollars – probably would have been cheaper just to install more ram or faster CPU’s in the first place.

Now, I have Vista, and while there are glitches that annoy me, the boot up time is not anywhere near 15 minutes. At times, when it seems to be taking forever, the lag is usually about 2 minutes max, so I am not sure what’s up with these vastly underpowered machines that are taking 15 minutes – regardless, these employees really should be paid for their time, even if it is waiting for the computer.

My question is, how much work time is wasted each week by Vista users circumnavigating glitches in the OS?

It looks like further advances in USB technology are just around the corner. While you won’t find the device available in time for Christmas this year, and possibly not even next year, by 2010, it will likely be in personal computers all over the world.

USB 2.0 has been around for a few years now and is common place on all new computers and peripherals, but before long it will start to be phased out with the next generation – USB 3.0.

USB 3.0 is going to deliver higher power efficiency, the ability to recharge a wider variety of gadgets, and due to its incredibly increased speed, will possibly even wipe out FireWire. Speeds achieved via USB 3.0 are expected to be up to 10 times faster than 2.0.

If you want to know more Wired has a far more detailed article on this upcoming technological improvement.