Neil, no I am at work, I still haven't tried PD8. Maybe tonite.
Robert, for the sake of a healthy discussion :
you have some good points. However, my guess is that not that many people are really doing any serious video editing. It takes too much time for the average Joe. Most would give it up after a few crashes.
Regarding the computer science... I am a long time Windows beta tester (since Win95) and a computer professional, besides doing a lot of advertising stuff, using Adobe CS. Some of the files I work with are really huge. InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash are my daily tools and even if any Adobe product is ten times more expensive than PD9, I still have no crashes whatsoever, with any other software. PD9 stands out, very clearly.
And, I do understand that the PC environment is very much more complex than for example, the Apple products. And it's not hard to understand that video editing is more demanding than anything else. I am still maintaining my view that PD9 is just not ready. It's a beta software, in my opinion. And I wouldn't hesitate to chuck it out, if I didn't have this much time invested in my current projects.
I once started out trying to learn Adobe Premiere and switched to PD7 on a recommendation. PD suited me fine, and I didn't have to fiddle so much to get the 16:9 output right. I still have Premiere, so I am thinking I might just go back to it and start learning the finer points of Adobe settings. Editing is much the same. I can't remember Premiere crashing, BTW. I might just try it to compare stability, as the crashes should be as frequent, if it really is a hardware issue I have.
It may take a week or so, though I will try both PD8 and Premiere and get back here and share my experiences.