Tonight I finally broke down and called Sprint's tech support regarding my text messaging issue. Upon speaking with tech support I learned something new. My 16 gigabyte memory card had been used in my old Verizon Tour, my old Verizon Blackberry Storm 2, my old Motorola Droid, my old HTC Droid Incredible and now my Sprint HTC EVO. I was told by three different people that my memory card may have some bearing on the slowness of my device and the force closing on my Android phones. A buddy a mines who is a beta tester out west also confirmed this theory that I initially believed to be bogus. So after wiping my memory card and hard resetting my EVO my messaging works like a champ now. I hope this helps out a few folks on this board.