You need to put rubber feet under it...
4 times 12x12x8mm rubber feet, cheap as chips from Bunnings, it removes almost all of the micro vibrations from the unit sitting on a hard shelf. When applying the rubber feet to the base of the unit, make sure you disconnect power first before turning it over - this is because of a point you raised, ie it always runs even in standby so the hard drive will be spinning and you don't want to turn it over while its spinning, not really a good idea.
Essentially it is always on 24/7, when you put it into standby it pretty much just switches off video, that's about it... Advantage of this if you call it that is virtually instantaneous on from pressing power.
I posted about the rubber feet being missing on the unit in another thread, it is one of only 2 gripes I have with the unit, the other being the remote.
As for watching recordings on your laptop...I posted this on whirlpool, it will work for you too on your laptop...
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I'm running...
core2quad CPU 2.6ghz
8gb ram
Windows 10
Downloaded and installed Kodi 15.1
After install I ran the program
Click on videos
Then files
Then add videos
Then click browse
Then click upnp devices
Then click the skippa
Then click Raw Recorded Files (you will NOT see any recordings at this point)
Then click OK
Then click OK again on the next screen
Now the Skippa is added as a folder under "videos / files" in Kodi and is a static link, so you only need to do that above one time.
Now just click on the skippa listing, select the file you want to stream, and hey presto, full screen playback of recordings from the skippa.
Fast
In sync
Whilst it's recording 2 other shows
No noticeable performance issues at all