No, this is definitely not something everyone is experiencing. My Laptop sleeps just fine regardless of how I put it to sleep, though generally it's just by closing the lid. My Mini seelps normally when sleep is invoked from the Apple Menu or by Cmd-Option-Eject from the keyboard. I was however premature with my statement that I had resolved the auto sleep issue. I have resolved it only for the first time auto sleep is invoked via the timer in the Energy Saver pane. Once I wake it, it goes back to only sleeping the display. I have been hammering away at it for several days, killing suspect processes without success. It's very frustrating. There aren't a lot of processes left to suspect.
When the Mini is truly asleep, my network connection to the router goes down (it's an ethernet connection and the light for that node goes out as it's not set to wake for network access), external drives sleep, and the light on the front of the Mini flashes. The Mini is cool to the touch after a few minutes and the very slight vibration for the internal drive and fans are absent. Logs indicate proper sleep, and show nothing happening whie the machine is asleep. So, I am absolutely sure on that one.
On the Laptop, the light also flashes when the lid is closed indicating normal sleep and it disappears from the WiFi network as expected. There is no heat buildup as would be expected if the machine were actually awake.
So, no this is not a case of something that is happening to everyone that they are failing to notice. But I am really baffled by the auto sleep working once after a reboot, but never again until the first time after another reboot. That's just weird.