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No need to panic when your system plays dead. There are keyboard shortcuts and tricks that often let you escape a system crash and save all your open files. More important, exiting crashes and freezes gracefully prevents you from scrambling data on your hard drive, which could offend the computer gods and make future crashes even more likely. When your computer won't respond, use the following techniques instead of hitting the power switch. Feel free to curse during the process.

Win 95
When you freeze or crash you can perform the "three-fingered salute" (hitting the Control/Alt/Delete keys simultaneously) to get a dialogue box that will offer you the opportunity to close the afflicted program by choosing "End Task." Two hints here: Don't hit Control-Alt-Delete again — it restarts the computer sans proper shutdown, for which you will pay later in blood. And don't choose Shut Down (ditto). Instead, press the Control and Escape keys at the same time. In most cases, this will bring up the Start menu, from which you can then choose Shut Down and proceed off the screen in an orderly fashion. (The Norton and Cybermedia utility programs mentioned under Worst Things First will intercept most Win 95 crashes.)

Mac
If your system won't respond to the mouse or the usual keyboard commands, hit the Command (a k a Apple), Option and Escape keys to "force quit" whatever application is holding things up — which may not necessarily be the one you were just using. If that doesn't work, or you've already got that annoying little bomb icon on the screen, hit the Command and "power" keys (the latter is at the top right of the keyboard, bearing a small triangle). You will see a blank box. Type G FINDER and then hit the Return key. It sounds like voodoo, but it usually works, closing the offending program and giving you a chance to save your work in other programs.