There are only two explanations if you've never seen a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)  in your lifetime. You're too young -- or you don't use Windows. To be fair, I haven't seen one either since I upgraded to Windows 7, but these fatal error screens were commonplace back in the days of Windows 98. But now you can consider the BSoD, in its former form, a relic. With the forthcoming introduction of Windows 8, Microsoft will eliminate harsh-looking error screens. The new Blue Screen of Death, though still technically blue, is easier on the eyes, subtle and much more friendly. You'll see a giant, sad emoticon with a simple message that tells you to restart the machine. The error information is below that, reduced to just one line, in a smaller font size. Seeing the new BSoD should also be significantly less distressing than the one we remember from a decade ago. Back then, we had to save our work manually. You could kiss everything goodbye if you failed to do so before the BSoD greeted you. Today, with the power of cloud computing, as demonstrated by Google's Chromebook commercial, getting back to your work after this friendlier BSoD should just be a (much faster) restart away. While there's no official release date for Windows 8, industry insiders say it could be out in the first half of 2012. On the other hand, Microsoft Vice President Dan'l Lewin, suggests that it'll be out in fall next year. "Typically we enter a beta phase, and then in 12 months we're in the market, so let's make that assumption," he said.