BILL GATES AND WINDOWS WASTING YOUR TIME

BILL GATES AND WINDOWS WASTING YOUR TIME

SAN FRANCISCO (Wireless Flash) -- If you've got less time on your hands these days, blame Bill Gates and his Windows operating system. According to San Francisco computer expert Michael Nadelman, the average Windows 98 computer takes at least a minute to boot up -- and the new Windows 2000 operating system will take even longer. Since Windows resides on 60 million computers in the U.S. along, that adds up to nearly 16 billion wasted minutes each year -- or about 30,000 years worth of time. Nadelman figures the delay costs American businesses at least $1.5 billion each year. Help may be on the way, though. A very expensive device known as a "FlashROM card" stores the operating system on a high-speed chip and cuts the boot time down to a matter of seconds. Right now, only the military and the very rich can afford the cards, but Nadelman hopes the devices will soon become affordable for all.