UK office workers are spending so much time rebooting their computers that the downtime adds up to 1.1 million lost hours of work, or £14 million in real money, every day.
The average office worker is forced to restart their crashed computer at least once a day. Each time it takes almost four minutes for their PC to start up again.
Two working days a year spent rebooting
In total, we spend a massive two working days per year switching our computers on and off after they freeze on us. Fourteen per cent even reckon they spend longer trying to fix computer problems than they do actually working, according to a survey by internet search engine Foundem.com.
Some 12 per cent of the 2,000 respondents said they had hit their computer in their frustration, and 16 per cent said they had broken their keyboard or mouse after getting wound up by rebooting.
"These results are really alarming," said a spokesman for Foundem.com. "If you have to reboot your computer everyday something is wrong.
"50 per cent of those surveyed felt that they didn't have an IT person to call on when they have a problem. If businesses were aware of the money this is losing them, I'm sure they would treat their IT support problems more seriously.'"
Here are the top five most annoying things to do with computers, according to the survey:
- PC running very slowly
- PC freezing
- PC shutting down inexplicably
- Losing a document before saving it
- Keyboard buttons stick
