Thanks for the additional info, obsessed2. I was pretty sure the ST warranty *did* say it started while the manufacturer's warranty was still in effect -- I just wanted to doublecheck because that's a definite departure from the standard "extended service agreement" type of warranty that you typically get offered with various products.

All the user comments about ST are pretty thoroughly glowing, as well.

If ST were to care at all about beta vs. official release (which they probably don't), then "version 0.9" would be enough to draw scrutiny. But as you say, WSODs, screen locks, and hibernation issues occur with lots of devices,* so it's obviously tied up with hardware or drivers on some level.

*For instance, the total POS Dell laptop I bought in 2008 with the beyond-total-POS Windows Vista (which was more like an alpha version) that went into bizarre spontaneous self-hibernate/wake-up/re-boot cycles on the eighth day and went back to the dang store on the ninth. I think of this experience every time someone mentions the perceived unreliability of Entourage, because Dell and MS were both, unsurprisingly, useless on that occasion -- it was the retailer's return policy that saved my bacon, not manufacturer tech support.