Opera browser and its flash plugin does seem to blow chunks...closely followed by the video player. Why didn't they use firefox, thunderbird and mplayer? I suppose they wanted to save the nickle on the extra memory those programs might have needed.

Removing the rs-mmc and changing which usb port I used doesn't help.

Will use Linux later to update the 770 but why should a consumer resort to Linux to update this device?

Why don't they use something lke yum or apt with a GUI interface? It tells you a software update is available with the changes, do you want to update. Instead, it is one big binary which overwrites everything that you have customized.