[Infowarrior] - Unpaid time while Vista boots results in lawsuits

[Richard Forno]

Unpaid time while Vista boots results in lawsuits

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/11/19/vista.boot.times.lawsuit/

Certain employers are docking their employees' pay while they wait for  
their Vista PCs to boot up, to the tune of 30 to 60 minutes per day,  
resulting in class-action lawsuits being brought against the  
employers, says a Tuesday blog report. The employers, which include  
big companies such as AT&T, United Health Group and Cigna, argue  
workers often go on coffee, smoke or social breaks while they await  
their machines to boot up, and therefore do not do any work. The  
lawsuits have popped up over the last year and are being handled by a  
lawyer experienced with cases involving long boot times.

As the cause of the long boot times are in essence the company's  
responsibility, lawyers representing the employees maintain the  
workforce cannot legally be docked for this. Las Vegas lawyer Mark  
Thierman is representing the wronged employees, while the six  
companies named in the lawsuit have undertaken the services of  
Princeton, NJ's Richard Rosenblatt from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius for  
defense.

The unusually long boot and log-off/shutdown times, reported as  
between 15 and 30 minutes, could be due to running Vista on slower,  
older hardware and/or the company opting to use heavy-duty security  
and monitoring programs as part of the start-up process.

Microsoft has recently launched a Vista Velocity program to improve  
start times with out-of-the-box PCs and has also pledged to reduce the  
load time for Windows 7 when it launches as early as next year.