The Crashless PC

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To dream the impossible dream, as the song goes. The high tech industry should be ashamed of itself, especially those of you who develop and sell operating systems.

I'm on a tear. I spent a huuuuuuge chunk of my weekend editing a short video on my laptop. Well over 50% of my time was spent rebooting the *#$%&^% computer from crash after crash. A four hour project turned into a fourteen hour project.

This is totally unacceptable.

Yes, yes... I could use more memory.

However, why should I need more memory to perform an application spec'd out to work on my computer?

Yes, yes... I'm limping buy with Windows XP until Windows 7 comes available this Fall.

However, my PC doesn't know it's 2009. Why should it matter?

The tech industry prides itself on innovation. New gee whiz tech gizmos and applications literally come out everyday.

The world needs a crashless PC more than that one millionth iPhone app or a touchscreen laptop.

If you think netbooks are a hot sector in PC sales, think how well a crashless computer would sell! I have no doubt that the response would be so phenomenal it might single-handedly pull us out of this global de, er uh, I mean recession.

Think how much energy the planet would save if operating systems didn't crash.

Think how much work productivity we would get back if operating systems didn't crash.

Think how much money we would save as a result.

Think how much stress it would relieve in the office, if you never had to worry about a computer crashing on you five minutes before a meeting when you needed to print off that last report on the way to the conference room?

Think how many marriages would be saved and soccer games attended by working parents, if not for staying at the office an extra hour or five dealing with a moody PC.

If Google can dream up data storage centers at sea...

If Apple can invent a smartphone that does everything but my laundery...

If Microsoft can... (sorry, nothing comes to mind right now)

You get my pointl. If the best and the brightest of the high tech industry can dazzle us with so many bling bling technologies and on such a ample and steady diet, then for crying out loud could just one or two geniuses in the bunch stop down for awhile and tackle this one. Google, I know you don't do operating systems for the PC. But why not blow a little of that "20% time" on this. I'm sure you'd have something out in beta in time for Christmas.

By the way, I double dog dare anyone from Microsoft to leave a comment below.

(Now, I'm about to hit publish. First let me kiss my lucky rabbit's foot, say a few Hail Mary's, close my eyes, clench my teeth and pray this sucker doesn't crash on me losing this entire posting.)

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio