Just as an update. I am in the process of downgrading because, for whatever reason, with .81 I averaged about 16.5MB of free memory. The memory ever so slowly would decrease and I would perform a soft reset every four or five days.

With .97, however, I began with 15.9 or so MB on install and it quite quickly would proceed into the 14's (within a day or less).

I am not sure if it's simply based on programs I have installed, but I seem to have had better success with .81.

Edit:

Any idea what I am doing wrong here? I uninstalled .97, restarted the computer, and opened DM (sans vendor.xml). Nothing. I reinstalled .81 and redeleted vendor.xml. Still nothing. Any idea why DM isn't trying to replace the software on the Pearl?