Thanks for the help I'll look into firestorm, prefer to wait for the alpha but the reviews seem favorable.
I haven't installed on top of any other previous version's, this is my first phoenix viewer.
Regarding it being possibly my system at fault, is unlikely, I run other graphics/bandwidth sucking games/rpg's that use a lot more of my card than SL does with zero problems so I don't think it could be that.
As it's not happening a lot, only very now and then, it could be just the usual SL probs of connection glitches making the viewer crash. I can live with it for now, it's just a pain when it happens.