Achilles and the Blue Screen of Death

The athletic world received a shock this week as David Beckham, international soccer's golden boy, suffered a shock injury that ended his dream of competing in this summer's World Cup. Beckham had been burning the candle at both ends for a couple of years, playing his regular season with the Los Angeles Galaxy and spending the off-season in Italy, playing with AC Milan. In his mad-dash effort to keep himself at the highest international level of fitness and play, it's possible that Beckham may have brought about the very injury that will sideline him for the next six months: a torn achilles tendon.

In the computer world we also strive to compete at the highest level. That is to keep our computers running as optimally and effectively as possible. While star athletes like Beckham live in fear of a torn achilles or blown out knee, we live in fear of the dreaded blue screen of death, or worse.

The blue screen of death is usually thought to be the result of a faulty driver or bad software, often downloaded during a system update. System updates, ironically, are intended to keep our systems running optimally. So just as Beckham's quest for World Cup glory seems to have ended itself, our quest for maximum system optimization, may in fact be putting our computers at risk.

When it comes to updating one's system, this writer subscribes to the golden rule: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Some updates are necessary, even mandatory. Many however are not and some can actually impair your computers performance, or worse, result in the dreaded blue screen of death. It's important to be aware of what exactly your updating, and why. In one's rush to keep one's computer running on the edge of optimal performance one can easily suffer the computer equivalent of a torn achilles tendon. Thankfully, for us, a trip to the computer shop can usually remedy the problem. For poor David Beckham (words I never thought I'd utter!) the solution is not so simple.

His successful surgery in Finland behind him, Becks will now begin a slow recovery process that will see him celebrating his 35th birthday, missing this summer's World Cup, the end of AC Milan's season and the start of the LA Galaxy's before he returns to match fitness. Will be bounce back to play at a high level? Should he have pushed himself so hard in the first place? Perhaps only the man himself knows the answer.