In my case the hardware is a Dell Optiplex 755, dual core 3ghz, 4gb ram. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 i686 with kernel 2.6.32-25-generic-pae. Evolution version is 2.8.3, Nautilus is 2.30.1. I'm checking my email on MS Exchange 2003 via OWA with Evolution. The crashing without warning usually happens first thing in the morning when the Exchange server is very busy. Sometimes Evolution will let me know it has lost communication with the backend Exchange processes. In either case, there are always two background Evolution processes running that have to be killed manually before the client can be launched again :

matt     21670  0.0  0.2  70964  9212 ?        Sl   08:06   0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server-2.28 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_DataServer_InterfaceCheck --oaf-ior-fd=36
matt     21690  0.0  0.3  68564 12108 ?        SLl  08:06   0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.28/evolution-alarm-notify --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Calendar_AlarmNotify_Factory:2.28 --oaf-ior-fd=38

If I strace Evolution first thing in the morning I will see tons of these while it tries to sync :

gettimeofday({1286975021, 949045}, NULL) = 0
gettimeofday({1286975021, 949083}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=21, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}, {fd=49, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=11, events=POLLIN}], 10, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN|POLLOUT}], 1, -1) = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLOUT}])
writev(3, [{"\31\0\v\0\223\0\300\3\0\0\0\0! \0\0\223\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0"..., 48}, {NULL, 0}, {"", 0}], 3) = 48
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}], 1, -1)    = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLIN}])
read(3, "\241 \373\307\223\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 64
read(3, 0x9d47718, 4096)                = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN|POLLOUT}], 1, -1) = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLOUT}])
writev(3, [{"\31\0\v\0\227\0\300\3\0\0\0\0! \0\0\227\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0"..., 48}, {NULL, 0}, {"", 0}], 3) = 48
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}], 1, -1)    = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLIN}])
read(3, "\241 \375\307\227\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 64
read(3, 0x9d47718, 4096)                = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN|POLLOUT}], 1, -1) = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLOUT}])
writev(3, [{"\31\0\v\0\310\0\300\3\0\0\0\0! \0\0\310\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0"..., 48}, {NULL, 0}, {"", 0}], 3) = 48
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}], 1, -1)    = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLIN}])
read(3, "\241 \377\307\310\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 64
read(3, 0x9d47718, 4096)                = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN|POLLOUT}], 1, -1) = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLOUT}])
writev(3, [{"\31\0\v\0\214\0\300\3\0\0\0\0! \0\0\214\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0"..., 48}, {NULL, 0}, {"", 0}], 3) = 48
poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}], 1, -1)    = 1 ([{fd=3, revents=POLLIN}])
read(3, "\241 \1\310\214\0\300\3\216\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\2\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 4096) = 64
read(3, 0x9d47718, 4096)                = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
gettimeofday({1286975021, 961649}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=21, events=POLLIN}, {fd=40, events=POLLIN}, {fd=41, events=POLLIN}, {fd=49, events=POLLIN}, {fd=15, events=POLLIN}, {fd=11, events=POLLIN}], 10, 0) = 0 (Timeout)
read(3, 0x9d47718, 4096)                = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
read(3, 0x9d47718, 4096)                = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)

HTH,
Matt