Regaining the faith with linux

Christmas was pretty busy so i didn't spend much time with the computers and didn't do any of the things I'd planned. Towards the second weekend Ubuntu started playing up a bit. Occasionally it would completely stall with no way to recover except a hard reset.
I decided to investigate windows vista. It felt elicit and dirty and at first sight vista is very sexy. The ui swishes around and guides you painlessly along. It was quick and responsive at first. But after just a day it got old. And slow. The differences with xp are only skin deep and in many ways it is even more restrictive. The UI is very pretty and usability is generally better but it is still windows - with all the baggage that implies.
So I happily returned to Linux. I removed the still experimental Beryl 3D Desktop although i doubt it's the cause of the crashes. I'm fairly certain it's something to do with the video card and i am leaning towards suspecting the hardware. The card is almost too hot to touch and the crashes tend to occur when playing video. The crashes aren't frequent - about every two to three days and i would be happy to replace it but the thing is I've just invested in two very nice toys and will have to hold my breath a bit before getting any more.
The first of my new toys is a beautiful 40" samsung LCD TV. This is possibly the nicest and most expensive piece of electronics i have ever owned. It's certainly the largest. I carefully researched this purchase but it has still exceeded my expectations. The picture quality is superb for TV usage and it is very usable as a PC monitor when sitting at a distance. The resolution is too low to even consider using it as a desktop monitor but for web-surfing from the sofa it is perfect.
Text is clear, sharp and large and you still get the same amount of page showing as you do with a regular pc monitor. With myth you can even use the remote to navigate.
The second toy is a Nokia e61 "smart-phone". A few years ago there was a debate between experts about mobile computing. One camp predicted that in the future people will carry a single powerful device that combines everything. The other spoke of the personal network in which you have small dedicated devices talking to each other a comms module. For example: a headset, a camera, storage unit, etc. This pic'n'mix approach makes more sense to me - but at the moment, the all-in-one group seem to be winning.
The e61 is a nice toy and it works well within it's design parameters. I am typing this post on it but the keyboard, is just too small and my thumbs are getting really saw. The screen is less than half the size of that on my old Palm T3 and it doesn't even have a camera. It's much wider then a normal phone so it doesn't fit comfortably into a trouser pocket. As a phone (for voice) it's pretty good in terms of features, sound quality and reception but the keypad is very awkward when typing numbers - it has a funny layout and there is no way to use it with touch alone. A really nice feature is voice activated dialing which works without any pre-learning and has worked perfectly for me. I have ordered a stereo headset which i believe has play/skip buttons on it so this should be a reasonable music player (with a MiniSD Card). In a quick test i had no problem playing music while doing other things on the phone (e.g. surfing).
But in the end it doesn't do any one thing really well. I think the ideal solution (for me) would be a small camera/music phone + pda (a Palm TX?) + blue-tooth keyboard. I will try to return the phone.