I have to write this before the Apprentice starts so I'll hurry.

This is a rant about three products, and how they interact - Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Windows XP. The problem occurs occasionally while viewing a PDF file in a tab. The browser locks up and and decides to take Windows along with it. The only recourse is rebooting.

In a situation like this, it's hard to place blame. Should I curse Mozilla Firefox as this problem never happens when Internet Explorer is working with Acrobat Reader?! Should I blame Adobe Acrobat for creating a plugin that unfortunately takes too long to load up, loading something like 26 (Look in the Acrobat plugins folder) different plugins itself?! Or should I blame Microsoft Windows XP which gets completely crippled when any process locks up and occupies 99% or more processor time, allowing the UI to become so sluggish that it takes more than 35 minutes (I timed this) to simply bring up the Task Manager so I can kill the offending task?!

Frankly I'm frustrated. I don't feel like giving up Firefox because I like tabbed browsing and Sage too much. Adobe Acrobat is a necessary evil. And Microsoft Windows has developed such a reputation of crashing and freezing that it seems futile to even begin to rant about how a user should always be able to easily kill a process.

Perhaps Robert or Ben have any suggestions or soothing words.

I'm halfway into the Apprentice now and Andy just came up with the Polaroid photo idea.