Following my post of 2/18, I tried another experiment: I have deliberately not cleared any of the memory spaces. Predictably, my 8703e (Verizon) finally rebooted itself, duplicating the condition observed by many others. My usage is heavy of both phone and data (ave 3500 min/month). When the reboot was complete, the free memory had reset to its normal value of 29meg (yes, in spite of running over 36 3rd party apps, that is how much free memory I have).

From my perspective, this validates the theory I put forth on 2/7/08 regarding overload of memory. If you want to avoid this problem, either download and install the patch or clear your memory often. You may take this advice for what it is worth. I have satisfied my curiosity and now that there are two solutions I wish to thank those of you who have contributed your comments.

I believe that one of the moderators had commented that if you have more than 18meg free you are doing good. I take this as further confirmation of the importance of routine purging of the memory. I am going to check with RIM and see if that is what the Sprint patch does. _________ 73