If I read the .pdf of the class action correctly, the plaintiff bought their now malfunctioning PS3 in Jan 2009 (no mention of new, only that it was for several hundred dollars) and the update was in Sept 2009... that's less than a year and this should be covered by the warranty (not for $150 which is the standard price for out of warranty repairs). It would appear that the PS3 in question was used and over a year old. Who knows what that particular unit's history was??? Methinks there's more to this than just bugs in the code (which could be there). Oh, and I have 3.0 and 3.0.1 on a PS3 20GB (launch Nov 2006) and a new Slim that are running just fine (anecdotal I know).

Correct me if I'm wrong; but, can't you simply use a FW 800 to 400 connector adapter? FW 800 as I understand it is backwards compatible (at least the chipset on the macs is supposed to be that way). Granted you might not be able to run mixed (eg full 800 on some and 400 on others) but you'd at least be able to run your FW400 devices in legacy mode. Oh, the adapters are like $5.