Well, I think I may have narrowed it down a bit. I'm at least now getting it to stay open.
I did the following:
1. Ran the Diagnostics, which, of course, found nothing.
2. Decided to see what Add-ins were actually active.
After having Outlook crash 3 times just trying to open the Trust Center I found that there was a TON o' crap in there....and, I usually keep that trimmed down, but I guess Office 2007 auto-added these in and I didn't notice at first.
There were Add-ins for every MS Office app you can imagine. I disabled all of those, plus Sunbelt Software's Add-In (I use it for everything but checking email...tends to slow Outlook down) and only left Plaxo and Quickfile and Windows Search.
Outlook actually crashed again, while saving the settings, but upon restart I saw that the changes had taken effect.
So, keeping my fingers crossed, it seems that all may be well....
Hope this helps anyone else out there who is struggling.