I guess at this time it is fair to say that many different systems are affected by this bug (not just HP as originally claimed) and there are different side effects of it. Some manage to boot their machines and have only problems when restarting (myself included), others have problems even installing anything on the drive.
I can only hope that Intel comes through on the promise and delivers firmware update on time. I do like the drive, its performance and design, but the firmware needs to be up to standards, as expected from Intel.
Also, given the volume of complaints here and in other places, I fail to believe it has been "thoroughly" tested. Multiple configurations have been reported as affected, so chances are the sample that was used for validation was not really representative