The folks over at Ars Technica bought an iPod nano and decided to find out how much damage it can take. They sat on it, they dropped it, they tossed it out a car window at a variety of speeds, and then they got really serious about it. Various readers express their horror and dismay on the site's forum, and yeah, it's a pretty extravagant/wasteful thing to do, but it sure is entertaining. And it should lay to rest most doubts about the device's durability.
Why is this so horrible? This is exactly the kind of thing I’d want to know before spending hundreds of dollars on a very very small piece of technology. I mean, I’m unlikely to drop it from the window of a moving car, but the damn thing -looks- fragile. It’s good to know that it’s not so fragile.
I mostly just liked reading the story, though, because it reminded me of the stress-testing of Snapple bottles that some friends and I did in high school. (The school officials announced a ban on glass bottles, and we were arguing that Snapple bottles, by virtue of being nearly indestructible, should be exempt. We dropped them onto concrete from a variety of heights and documented the results.)
I think from the point of view of people who take very good care of their equipment and/or don’t think the nano looks fragile, and/or can’t afford a nano but would love to have one, it looked like a waste of a lot of money and/or a cool device. (And I think a couple of people got emotionally invested and felt sorry for the poor little device.)
And arguably, the reviewers didn’t actually have to destroy it; they could’ve said “We subjected it to the planned series of stress tests and it kept on working. Cool!”
I can see both sides; I certainly agree that it’s good to know the nano isn’t especially fragile, but (a) I suspect they could’ve done a more thorough job of testing more likely damage scenarios (like accidentally bending it); and (b) it’s a solid-state device, so it’s not too surprising that it’s not as fragile (in terms of whole-body impact damage) as a hard drive would be; and (c) if I had a spare $200 lying around unused, I can think of things I would rather spend it on than buying a new electronic toy and immediately setting out to destroy it. But then again, the review was entertaining, and probably drew lots of people to the site, so I can’t say the money was wasted; and anyway, people are free to spend their money on whatever they want.
But I can’t help thinking it might have been cool if the reviewers had said, “We were going to destroy this $200 device, but then it occurred to us that the $200 we would spend on a replacement might buy a lot of food and clothing for victims of recent disasters in various parts of the world, so we decided not to destroy it after all.”
Then again, their end goal was to take the thing apart, which might have made it stop working anyway.
I agree with Susan. By its very nature, the Nano is a frivolous device. They were not going to spend it on Katrina. In fact it’s probably their best spent money in terms of entertainment value and exposure. Here we all are discussing it.
It’s a review site, so in all probability they didn’t pay for it in the first place. Some companies want their review products back, others aren’t so bothered. (I’ve had experience of companies who don’t bother getting it back if the cost of the courier is a significant percentage of the product’s value. And no-one ever wants s/w back.)
I’m glad someone had the balls to test it this way. I’ve finally seen one in the flesh now, and they do look mighty flimsy.