Quote from dawesdust_12 :

1) Spinny Ball != to a crash... Crashing is usually an unexpected reboot or an error message. The Spinny ball is usually a lack of RAM, so it needs to take a bit of time to do page file swapping.

Quote from http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1996_hr/s960605a.htm :

A computer or program is said to "crash" when it has become inoperable because of a malfunction in the equipment or the software.

Not having a dig, but that mac was inoperable. They're pretty high spec imacs we have at uni, so it wasnt lack of ram. Most likely network related.

Quote from Kegetys :

No?

Yes, macrovision exists, but it isn't used on tv broadcasts (yet)...just on other VHS tapes and DVDs. Recording a TV program is just, tape in, record...on in the case of DVRs, record

and contrary to the wiki article, i've never had a problem recording a program through a cable box, regardless of using a VCR, Tivo, or PC. And is even through several different cable companies. never tried through satellite. though friends with satellite haven't had any problems with recording.

Quote from pb32000 :

Not having a dig, but that mac was inoperable. They're pretty high spec imacs we have at uni, so it wasnt lack of ram. Most likely network related.

A badly run network is a badly run network regardless of what OS you use, if you have to login via a server (as opposed to logging into a machine then connecting to a server to access files) on a crappy network it will be slow and unusable end of story, unfortunately my school doesn't actually seem to do any maintenance on its network so if you want to use a computer you normally have to look for one that is actually complete with keyboard, mouse and ethernet cable and then sit and hope the networks working.