Thanks for all the helpful advice, and it's really fun chatting with all of you. (And I love your Avitars!)
Regarding the A12 upgrade (God, I've been through it all!), I've done that before and had nothing but trouble with it. My original Axim came with ROM A06. Perhaps I should have done the hard reset after I was done installing A12, but I had NOTHING but trouble. I finally bullied Dell into giving me an Axim with A12 already loaded (this current Axim), and it seemed to work fine.
Regarding my apps, that's what puzzles me. I don't think I'm running anything that would severly tax the device's capabilities, so why so much trouble. I even went so far as to ask Dell if there was anything I could do different "procedurally" to mitigate the cumulative, erratic behavior. Aside from suggesting closing unused (running) applications, Dell wasn't much help. (Go figure.) I already practice "safe computing", e.g., clean the memory regularly with MemMaid and close all unused apps, so Dell didn't tell me anything that I already know. Perhaps, I'm just the poster-child for Axim bad luck. Nonetheless, I could have bought an HP iPAC 211, but I haven't given up on my x51v just yet. I should be receiving the new one in a few days, so I'll keep you all posted.