Great when it works

Having purchased the 80 gig version of the PS3, I was ecstatic to see how great it played games, BluRay discs, and even automatically logged into the internet..... Then.... after 3 months it died. I went on line to the Sony website forums and discovered I was not alone. Many, many people were having problems. I started a thread to gather information but the Sony diehards started aguing about failure rates and the thread got locked. I started another thread and have managed to keep the 'bad guys' at bay. At present there are over 1770 posts with people asking what to do about their broken PS3. http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&thread.id=2749209
Sony has been getting better at turn around times but still refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for defective components, which are centered on the disk reading components.
The problems have often appeared just after a system upgrade, which is downloaded from your wireless network internet connection. A game will lose audio and then lock up. After restarting the console, you can no longer read any discs. Other failures center around frequent freezing of games or complete frequent shutdowns. The system runs VERY HOT.