Hi Kirk, today I simply connected a Lexar card in a Lexar Firewire card reader I'd used many times before to my G4 Powerbook running 10.4.8 with the first beta of 4.5.1 already running. This caused the app to crash and the PM crash reporter came up. Without entering any details (an error on my part I admit) I hit the send report option , after this none of the buttons on the crash reporter would respond thus causing me to have to force quit PM. Again there as a loss of my prefs, indeed I believe that my last experience of loss of prefs did not involve the Apple Crash reporter at all but the PM one.
thanks
Simon