But wouldn't a switch prevent all the collisions i'm seeing and speed things up a bit?

Yup. Just replace that cheap 10baseT hub with cheap 10/100 switch. A quick trip to Fry's should land you one for next to nothing.

And if for some reason the empeg doesn't like being plugged into the switch (sometimes that happens), just plug the empeg into the 10baseT hub and plug the hub into the switch.

When I spec'd the wiring for our current building, I made sure that our users wouldn't have these sorts of problems, by making sure everyone had at least two lit RJ45 jacks at each workstation going back to the main patch panel. For the few who needed more, I supplied the hardware to go in their cube.

Dunno whether anyone appreciates how nice it is to have two jacks instead of one at each cubicle. Ah well, I appreciate not having to worry about supporting hubs in each cubicle.