You might also have a hardware problem.
Make a note of the error message at the top of the BSOD and google for it.
If you want to do some tests , download something called "Ultimate boot CD" which is a boot disk with a combination of DOS and Linux based hardware test programs. I've used it to find faulty memory on many a misbehaving system.
Another gem from this fresh windows install - headphones will work only if I boot into Windows while headphones are plugged in. If I boot without headphones and then plug headphones after I log in - no sound in headphones :)
My point is - there are all kinds of bugs in all popular OSes. I bet MacOS have bunch of them too. You just getting used to ones. Like it is never a problem for me to fix a webcam in linux, but it frustrates me to download 600 megs of drivers software to get my video card functional. The same way OP really frustrated by broken webcam and not really concerned about windows needs to update drivers, constantly monitor for viruses, etc.
One thing I noted tho - most frustration with Ubuntu (or any really linux desktop) I see comes the fact that some particular hardware is not working. The same hardware often have problems on Windows platform. And more often than not drivers/software for this hardware are closed source with bugs which never get fixed (because manufacturer's business in selling hardware, not software.) So apparently we would not have most of these issues with any OS if software required to run hardware would be open sourced. This will never happen probably tho..
You might not need 600MB of drivers for your video card, it's that the manufacturer packages it with 600MB of software. On a modern HDD 600MB isn't so much anymore.
BSOD really does overwhelmingly indicate some hardware failure, it is not uncommon for a PC (especially one that is highly used) to develop failures later in it's life. I would suspect common culprits to be your power supply, memory or HDD.