Hi. I've also experienced several crashes with software today. I have a Zire 71. I would be playing and then I'd power off. When I power on again later, a number of flashing messages on the screen would show up and wouldn't stop. I noticed that I have my Power to "off in 30 seconds" and the game did not like that. I've now set it to "off in 3 minutes" Also, since my people were dying, I had decided to start a new game. When my Zire powered off in the middle of my second game with 6 people, it somehow relapsed, by doing a soft reset, twice. When I open the game again, it opens into my old game where I had only 1 person left. So then I had to click on new game and start again. I'm now more careful to go to the main menu of the game and then exit out of the game before i power off. This seems to help.
Also, in regards to the first game with only 1 person left, a 19-yr old boy, i think there was something wrong. There was no food left, but his health did not get worse and he was only 5 when I had no food source available any longer. He was invincible. It was a nice glitch, but unfortunately, i did not have any other people to live on the island to work, etc. Also, I've had experience where the screen will freeze up during the game, and luckily my zire will power off and when i power on again, it works.