From time to time I have a long pause (say, 2-3 seconds) between tracks and see the W-symbol at that time (if the harddisk-icon is turned on).

Strange thing about this: I see this about once an hour if Hijack is installed - but only about once a day when Hijack is NOT installed.

I have that same issue with both my players (empeg and riocar, 12MB and 16MB) and I also logged the serial-port when that was happening - no messages at all.
It doesn't matter if I listen to VBR- or CBR-encoded music. It happens with both.

Maybe some cache issue or memory-leak ? That comes more into foreground when more memory or resources are used ?

So since 2 months or so I don't have Hijack installed, because these frequent pauses are very annoying when listening to mix-CDs.
Trade-off: the remote really often doesn't work, because I can't enjoy the Hijack-fix of THAT issue... not to mention all the other luxuries of Hijack ...

Last time I tried it with Hijack v266, so I'll give it a shot with the newest version today...