this is bullchocolate..when i had my first used 60gb ps3 it froze up in the middle of writing files fro system update at least 50 times and NEVER was it a brick.  Its not like a psp where if it fails writing files it won't boot.  It always booted up the next time.   I even turned it off half way through just to see what would happen cause i was so pissed off at it, and again, even though it says not to, nothing happened to the unit,it just booted right up to the xmb in the previous version of firmware.

Will be interesting to see how this pans out, i bet most of the people who 'sustained damage' probably just had very dusty insides.