Blue Screen of Death NOT Vanquished in Windows 7

Image from Photobuok

Sigh. I like Windows 7, I really do. It's pretty. It's sleek. It's faster than earlier versions of Windows. And I'm a Mac-o-Phobe, so I have plenty of motivation for playing up Microsoft's newest operating system. But moments ago, I was stopped in my tracks by the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. While doing. . .well, basically nothing that ought to cause such a thing.

The Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), for the uninitiated, is a fatal error on a Windows computer. The screen turns blue, with white or light blue text on it (a less common varient is the Black Screen of Death). The text is meaningless--like it is on any Windows error box--to anyone but someone who speaks machine language, or your mythical, all-knowing "system administrator." Unlike other errors, however, there is no coming back from a BSoD. Whatever you were working on is goneski. You might easily be able to reboot your machine, or you might have to physically unplug the thing. On rare occasions, even your friendly neighborhood computer guru (like me) can't help you, and you're either off to the Geek Squad, or to buy a new computer.

This morning, on my laptop computer (an admittedly entry-level machine), I had open AOL 9.5, Internet Explorer 8 and Spider Solitaire. Unable to endure the Sunday morning chat-fests with undivided attention, I was mid-move in the solitaire game, actually hitting the "M" key to get a hint on my next move, when DINK! Blue Screen of Death. Instantly, no segue, no warning. Now, the computer did almost immediately restart, Windows loaded quickly, and I was informed that I'd recovered from an error, and that the computer would report the problem to Microsoft. A little creepy, but all right.

But isn't this BSoD issue supposed to be vanquished? Couldn't Microsoft have at least changed the colors or appearance of it, just out of shame? Go ahead and laugh, Cult of Mac. Sometimes we deserve it. Just remember, your "perfect" system has its issues too. . .