Dear Sarah,
It's a basic question, but despite being
online for three years I can't get a straight answer and I still encounter it
with annoying regularity. Why do I get "frozen off" in the middle of
making my purchases on, say, babycatalogue.com or at the crux moment in a deep
and intricate search for ...whatever. I have to turn off the computer and
start ALL OVER AGAIN!!! Arghh! It happens more at home than at my worksite, although
I use the same provider and address. My system at home is faster but I get frozen
out more often...any thoughts? –lcc 
Dear lcc,
You have permission to be irate about this situation.
No working mother has time to hunt and gather stuff on the Web only to be flummoxed
at the cash register. At the same time, "freezing up," a.k.a. "crashing,"
is unfortunately a way of life with computers. As one of my favorite propeller-heads
says: "Every program has an abject disregard for every other program. The
solution is to quit, restart, and try, try again." Remember, computer
technology is in its infancy. The incidence of crashing will plummet, it is hoped,
as computer owners become more experienced with the technology–and as the
technology is refined: as residential customers get access to better connections,
as software bugs are corrected, etc. Etc., etc., etc. The good news, according
to John LaVallee of Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, is that it is often
possible to tell why your computer has crashed, and to correct the problem yourself.
For instance, you may discover that it's best to shut down all other applications
when you are online. The bad news is that crashing is bound to happen: in John's
words, you're "unceremoniously bounced out of the task you were performing,
you've lost whatever data was being entered, and the only recourse is to
completely reboot and start again." Bottom-line advice: save important
files on your hard drive; and copy the really important stuff onto a ZIP drive
or floppy disk, which you then label (including the date) and put in a very safe
spot. And lcc, the next time you're at babycatalogue.com, you might want
to jot down your order information on scrap paper–or simply print it out.
Good luck!
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