No problem, just go ahead and update.

I wouldn't be surprised if we find out the bricking consoles were tagged consoles. Ya know, hacked consoles. Then again, I am taking some random posters word on it who didn't provide the necessary links for me to investigate the matter myself.

Soooooo, if you aren't doing anything wrong you shouldn't be afraid to make the upgrade.

Update 4.0 has completely destroyed my Skyrim experience.

I had no problems at all in Skyrim pre 4.0 (9.2 MB game save).

Now, if I even TOUCH the controller during an autosave....lock.
After loading I will lag horribly for about 15-20 seconds (this might clear up perfectly, or I it will stay until I bring up the menu and then it will run fine).
Fireball....lag
Icestorm...lag
Chainlighting...lag
Im even getting audio lag (will miss a death sound and 20 seconds later Ill hear it).

Hell, I had the game lock at the Press Enter screen (twice).

Im on an original 60gig.

One good thing though, I have not lost a save. Have them all backed up on Cloud just incase, but I will not be playing my PS3 till this gets fixed.

I downloaded it and had no problem at all. I would say, the problems are not update-related. If you play a lot of multiplayer or wanna download a game or a patch, go ahead. If you dont wanna do this things, you can wait.

Update, via usb storage (is always better and faster).
To do it create a folder in a memory called PS3 in that folder create another Folder called Update and download the official update in your usb.

These "reports" pop up after every firmware update.
Its just hackers getting caught. Whoops.

MW3 owner here, no problem at all.

The Skyrim issues are because of shitty design my Bethesda. They decided to port the game stright from Xbox 360 so the split RAM on the PS3 has issues with Bethesda games like Fallout 3/new vegas and Skyrim.

Dude Skryrim is known to have issues on PS3. Has nothing to do with the firmware update. Its pure coincedance. 

My PS3 is fine when playing UC3, but I haven't put in Skyrim or MW3 yet (waiting til Christmas Day)

I've updated to 4.00 and I've had no problems.

I have another PS3 that is still running 3.73 using the exact same save file (off the cloud) with another original PS3 (this one is a 20gig).  It has no problem at all running Skyrim. 

I have also reinstalled Skyrim, and both started a new game and loaded a earlier save off cloud, and each of these does the exact same thing on 4.0.  Never seen any issue with the 20gig. 

Based on the above I refuse to believe this is a coincidence.  Im much more inclined to believe there is an issue between the original PS3s and 4.0 + the newest version of Skyrim.