I agree with JoeHill. When I was having constant crashes it was because my CPU was under-voltaged. Yet Windows XP kept running perfectly (if slower). I think Linux uses the hardware more fully, and is more effected by bad hardware. If you ever get a crash, try checking the /var/log/messages log for any kernel panics. Anton JoeHill wrote:

More likely though is some hardware issue, I'm thinkin' bad RAM. Come to think of it, you never did mention how much RAM you have in that machine (you really should have at the very least 128, but if you are running KDE or Gnome, those can really chew up memory, so 256 is what I usually recommend). I would try swapping out the RAM and see if the performance doesn't change.

Also, right after you boot up, open a term and type:

dmesg > dmesg.txt

then open that text file in an editor and look for any errors, esp with regard to memory.

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