Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

crash test dummy

You can’t say that Ars Technica isn’t thorough in its product reviews.

In their review of the iPod nano, Jacqui Cheng and Clint Ecker didn’t just evaluate the new music player’s interface and use. They also gave the sleek gadget a “stress test” — consisting of sitting on it, dropping it from various heights, stepping on it and running it over with a car. The display died early on, but the player and clickwheel kept chugging along until the reviewers finally threw it high up in the air and let it crash down to the pavement.

The reviewers followed it up with a detailed post-mortem of the device’s innards, showing, bit-by-bit, what seems to make it tick.

Their dedication to their craft is impressive, but at the same time, it makes me cringe a bit to see that iPod take so much abuse, almost as if it was my own iPod.