Should have issued airbags with PE8!

Question

PE7 was (at least to me) usable and stable.  It did what I wanted, and I don't recall stability issues.  That all ended with an "upgrade" to PE8.  I can't seem to keep it running more than 2-5 minutes before it crashes.  It happens at various times, and during various activities...including simply watching the screen.
I have a good NVIDIA video card (that seems to work just fine with every other product I have), but I read the pinned "solution" at the top of this forum and updated to the "beta" version of the driver that is supposed to fix the random crashing...however, my verified 195.81 drivers have had zero impact on the consistent PE8 crashing.  I haven't been able to complete a single project since I "upgraded" from version 7.  My system is 32-bit vista with 4GB physical ram and a stout core2quad processor.  It runs CAD, flight sims, and other audio and video apps both well and reliably...but not PE8.  The only other app it has had issues with is PSE8...but the minor issues with PSE8 pale in comparison to the complete lack of usability in PE8.
I see so many similar customer reviews and forum comments...that I wish, oh how I wish I had waited to make a decision about upgrading!!!
So the question is: considering how horrible this release has been, will there be a free and fixed version 8?  ...or will Adobe attempt to make it's customers wait for (and pay for) version 9?  I can say that if they think the latter is the case, Adobe lost me as a PSE&PE customer...and any hopes whatsoever for considering their alternative products like Lightroom, Photoshop or Premiere (non-Elements).  They may be fine products...but if the company's perspective is such with the entry level products, it won't take long for a company to feel too big for its britches with the higher end ones as well.
Did any QA whatsoever occur with PSE8 or PE8?

Answer 1

Thanks "Steve Grisetti" and "The Wine Snob" for your assistance.  Nothing so far has worked to keep PrE8 from crashing...
Steve Grisetti wrote:
There are a number of articles in the FAQs to the right of this forum on how to disable background processes and maximize the potential of the program to run stably.
Thanks for the pointer.  The first thing I did, once I found that PrE8 used background rendering, was to disable it.  Aside from that, I have prevented all other unnecessary apps and background processes from running and consuming resources.  No matter how slimmed down it gets, the crashing still occurs with a similar pattern.
the_wine_snob wrote:
In the meantime, all that I can offer are suggestions that might help get your system "tuned up," to do editing. Much of this is non PrE-specific and applies whether one is running it, PrPro, AVID, Edius, or any other NLE.
The first is on setting up your computer for an NLE session. It's covered in this ARTICLE.
The next is on general troubleshooting, and is covered in the links in this ARTICLE.
When one experiences crashes, either system or program, or hangs, there are often "clues" scattered around Event Viewer. This ARTICLE will give you tips on gathering those clues.
Along with those, here are some FAQ Articles:
FAQ 1 on increasing the odds of working with PrE 8.
FAQ 2 on turning off processes that continue to run, after one exits from PrE 8
FAQ 3 on turning off background processes in PrE 8
Though I haven't used the special task killing apps mentioned in some of the links, I've done all these things in spirit.
The organizer's AutoAnalyzer was turned off immediately after discovering that it trashes GPS tagging of images...not to mention consumed incredible resources for little value.
Vista's Indexing is still on, since I have other software that require this service to be on.  I can see how this would slow things down...but not cause crashing.  PrE7 was just fine with it.
I have 2 7200 RPM SATA hard drives with 32MB buffers that are not fragmented, and I have set a couple of the scratch disks (Video Previews and Media Cache) to use the second hard drive.  While this did increase performance/responsiveness of PrE8, it didn't prolong or prevent crashing.
I have an NVIDIA 9800GT video card that I have upgraded drivers from the latest stable to the beta as mentioned in other posts, and this did not affect crashing.  In fact, the only change I can notice is that my KVM has more trouble returning after my monitor goes to sleep...though I can't be sure that's not just a coincidence.
The video I'm editing is 640x480 30fps MJPEG in an AVI container.  This is from my fuji camera, and has never been a problem in any prior release of PrE (back to 3.0).  It's neither HD nor one of the sqirrelly new formats.  I have tried this without any rendering, and PrE seems to last just a little bit longer before crashing...but this is not objectively timed.  I have tried manually rendering all clips prior to working with the video.  This process takes a bit of time, and it does not crash during the manual rendering...but crashes very soon after beginning to edit the rendered clips.
I've considered setting processor affinity so that PrE8 has only a single core...but even if that fixed some threading problem, I'd reject using it for the simple case that this type of issue should not be present in long-standing commercial products that cost this much.
I would probably still complain a little if this were just a performance issue...but at the moment, my investment in the product is 100% waste.  In fact, it's greater than 100% waste since it's removed my ability to edit my videos.  I would go back to PrE7 if I could, but I'm concerned that doing so without a system rebuild would be futile...and I don't have the time for that right now.
Also, for the sake of comparison...MS Live MovieMaker works flawlessly and rapidly on my VGA videos, as well as 1080i stuff.  I would just use this tool if it had the ability to build DVDs with menus.
I would love to get PrE back and working reliably...but I think version 8 may have been the release that pushes me to competitor's products.  I'll gladly pay for improved features and/or compatibility...but I will refuse to continue paying for degraded compatibility and reliability.  The company that thinks it can get away with forcing customers to pay to get back the stability that they took away is nothing better than an organized crime protection raquet.  I hope I'm wrong and that Adobe will stand behind this product...but I doubt it.
Sam