Blue Screen of Death and other Myths.

I was half listening to a radio show yesterday about the Consumer Electronics Show, the general feeling that this year there wasn't really a wow moment and nothing earth shatteringly new had been shown. One of the guests was even rather dismissive of Apples new Intel based laptop range (which while a major shift from Apple isn't actually a major step forward in general). But one of the things that was said was about the unreliablility of Windows, the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) was mention and how often it happens.

It got me thinking, is that really true? I've been running windows (in it's various forms) since the early 90's and while it crashed with regularity in the earlly days I personally haven't had many problems for years. At work I ran NT for almost 3 years without even turning the PC off and only twice did I get the BSoD, after a quick restart everything was fine.

At home with XP it's just as good, while the PC doesn't stay on for days I've never had a BSoD and from what I recall never had to hold the off button down to clear a crash. I got a Mac last year and while that has a great reputation for stability I have had to hold the off button on a couple of occassions, am I to infer that Macs are buggy and unreliable?