And this was only a few months ago and he purchased his PS2 within a month or two of it being available

Hmm, interesting. My girlfriend's brother has a busted PS2 which started freezing up during games and movies. He thought it was because he left it on for a long time once (odd, none of the systems I've ever done that to have hurt from it). Then again, I never pounded my systems to fix them, either, do it might be the user and not the machine