Ok - an update.

I reloaded OS2007HE again the evening of the 7th (the date of my original posting), however, this time, I did 4 things:

1. ONLY load maemo-mapper and requisite packages (libsqlite and libxau0)
2. DISABLE swap to external card
3. DO NOT DEFINE email or IM account (I was using the provided software with a Jabber account for MSNmessenger).
4. DO NOT DEFINE/ADD all the 2007 repositories.

So far, has been stable.

I'm going to enable swap today, run for a few days and see what happens. I have a sneaking suspicion the root of problems are either something with the swap (about a 20% chance), or the IM/"presence" apps with Maemo (about 80% suspicious of the problem being here).

From previous experience, I also know that the apt program infrastructure is not very efficient about getting things done (memory use is horrible), cleaning up after itself, and generally auguring itself into the ground on smaller devices with a limited amount of memory/disk. So, I've left off the definition of most repositories.