On a techy basis the reason windows takes soo long to end a process that has crashed it that it writes a dumpfile for it, this is a feature of the kernal and is supposed to allow the OS to be more stable. The quickest way to get a non responsive application in windows 2k or XP is the open task manager and right click on the offending app and choose goto process. If it selects Explorer.exe do not kill it. There may be 2 apps the same so go back to the applications tab and choose the alternative and right click and choose goto Process it should then have chose the corret app click end process button. this stops the dumpprep.exe from running and the PC from crashing.

remember its not the OS that causes these issues its the poorly written applications that do... MS are to blaim for this as the SDK's are not at a low enough level to stop these types of things.

Anyway XP Sucs, Vista requires a super computer and macs are ok for what they can do well.