For what its worth, I've only seen two posters on AVS that have actual R-972s in their systems. One appears to be some sort of insider, the other does truly appear to be an average Joe. Both of them have stated that they have experienced no bugs. It is possible that these early units have each been individually tested and only those that are bug free have been released. They may not be releasing the individual units that have bugs while tweaking the production process to fix what issues have developed from the production versions. My guess is that we'll never know. But it does sound like the 972 has not had any issues so far (other than the obvious delays).