Support forums are where people bring problems - so yes, everything you've seen about the new XXX product will always be biased towards "they don't work". If you just count the number of J169/J179 issues I would say they've either been remarkably trouble free so far or there aren't many out there yet.
The main problem when they do occur seems to be people thinking they are an exact replacement for their existing 9600s, so they can just plug them in without changing anything, ie. they will just use the existing settings file with no changes.
I've seen some of the problems with slow responses, especially coming back from screensaver, but nothing fatal.
If the number of 9600 End-of-Sale notices I read are a clue, I would say get used to them quick.
Stuck in a never ending cycle of file copying.