[CentOS] OpenOffice 3.3.0 crashing on CentOS 5.5

The last few releases of OpenOffice have gotten very
unstable on my desktop which is a CentOS 5.5 i386 system.
After multiple crashes when doing embedded simple drawings
in OpenOffice writer (circles and lines with connections), I
started using the versions from Sun then Oracle.  I am
now using version 3.3:  openooffice.org3-3.3.0-9567.  I've
lived with this but with version 3.x it has gotten really bad.

Display info:  depth 16-bit, Intel Boradwater-G Chipset 965Q

Crashes I am experiencing now:

  Writer sometimes using 100% CPU and X is unresponsive.
    (I have to ssh to the workstation and kill Writer to recover.)

  Random crashes in Writer

  Writer crashes when moving circles or lines in
    simple drawings (mainly circles, lines, clipart, etc.)
    (insert -> object -> OLE object -> OO drawing)...

  crashes in Calc when adding text at the end of a
    line of text in a cell.

Could this be a problem with some setting or with Java?

Any help would be most appreciated,
--
Wade Hampton