I had issues with my first OCZ drive, the Vertex2 60GB. I RMA'd it once, and used the replacement for quite a while without issue till it just decided to stop being detected.
However, I have two other Vertex3 120GB and a 240GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe (I believe it's the same SF2281) and they have all been awesome. There is a distinct performance improvement on these drives compared to the Vertex2 (500+ MB/s vs 280MB/s in my benchmarks confirms the perception).
I have a 256GB Vertex4 on the way which I believe is no longer no SandForce (or SandFarce if that tickles you). I'm not all too afraid of buying OCZ just cause I had one bad drive, in the case of the Vertex2, I knew there were firmware widespread compatibility issues with any SSDs at the time anyway.
The fact of the matter is any drive can fail on you any time, and buying a particular brand absolutely does not negate the necessity of having your important data backed up, and your backups backed up. If you're not doing this, your data must not be that important.
I personally have found a very negligible difference in performance among the newer generation of drives. Therefore I would not recommend changing your Octane for another drive solely based on performance. I'm sure it will destroy any non-SSD hard drive as an OS drive.
Also, what is your usage scenario? My understanding is the XS guys are basically hammering the drives non stop, a sort of torture test for endurance. Which I think is totally awesome, however it's not necessarily relevant if you're afraid of "a drive dying younger" if you're a regular user. A normal user will probably never come close to wearing out the NAND flash, ever, even on one of the drives XS finds to die younger.
The top concern sure should be reliability, I think everyone is agreeing on that point, but what's going to dictate this reliability? Probably the firmware will be the #1 thing.
I personally would be ok with this Octane drive, it's worth trying out in my opinion. You yourself have had issues with the M4, one of the drives touted here as the best most reliable options next to Intel and Samsung. Kind drives home the point that you can have issues with any of them, SSD technology is still in its infancy when compared to mechanical hard drives.
hope all goes well with yours, and whatever you decide to do I'm sure you will be pleased with its performance!