The default configuration of the Palm OS Developer Suite isn't optimal, because it doesn't let the Eclipse environment use enough of your system's memory. Since Eclipse is a Java application, it runs in the context of a Java Virtual Machine. The JVM has a maximum memory size that it will allocate for its use; it doesn't grab all of this space initially, but when the total allocated memory reaches that size, garbage collection will become more frequent and you can run out of memory, even if there's lots of memory on your machine.
The eclipse.exe application starts the Java VM with its default memory parameters. On Windows, that gives it a maximum heap size of 64MB. To change this, you can run eclipse.exe with a set of command line parameters to change these values. For example:
eclipse -vmargs -Xmx512M
will tell the VM to allow up to 512MB for Eclipse and other Java applications. It won't commit 512MB when PODS starts, but it will let memory usage grow to that size. You can change the number after -Xmx to specify whatever size you want. If this helps, you can change your Windows shortcuts that you use to start the environment to include these switches.
One example of memory starvation occurs when you open the help system. Eclipse runs a mini-web server to provide pages for its help system. This server uses memory for its index of pages; it the JVM is starved for memory, there will be lots of garbage collection when searching for data, which leads to long pauses when moving around the Eclipse environment.