The only problems I have had on my Mk2 unit are known (and subsequently fixed) software bugs in the betas. None of the hardware issues you described have happened to me. I've run every version of the software and most of the versions of Hijack. Right now I am running 2.0b11 and Hijack 199, and the player hasn't locked up or given me any other trouble recently. I haven't even been bitten by any software bugs, known or otherwise, lately. My unit is a 6+10gb player (the 10 was added by me).

This is like a similar question that came up on the Mitsubishi TV forum at hometheaterspot.com. Because the only time someone ever went there to post, it was because they were having some kind of trouble, and so the forum was only filled with bug reports. The result was that it made the product look bad. You never saw posts by the many happy and satisfied users saying "2 years, still no problems, love the product".

On another note. When the unit is placed in standby and the LED starts to blink are there any read / write operations still being executed?

This is a FAQ entry.

EDIT: I have just added a new FAQ entry on the subject here as well.