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Is the Game Boy the Toughest Product Ever Made?
An anonymous reader writes "CNET is running an article about tough technology, which aptly includes the Nintendo Game Boy, a device so tough that mine still works after many years. 'There's no two ways about it: the original Game Boy is one of the hardest gadgets ever conceived. Rumor has it this beige behemoth isn't made of plastic, but from the skulls of fallen Gurkhas. If you ever saw one that was broken, it's because it lost a boxing match with a nuclear bomb — on points.' So do you agree that the Game Boy is the toughest consumer electronics device ever made?"
I still have my pet rock, 30+ years later...
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Back in the stone age when you didn't own your phone, but just leased it from the phone company, those things were darn near indestructible.
Subscribers can see articles in the future? So what? Everyone gets to see them in the future.
It still works like a charm.
http://www.aqualion.com/blog/uploaded_images/football-777893.jpg
I've had this for over 25 years. Still works.
Will it blend?
HP 1xC calculator series, e.g. 12, 15, 16, etc. My HP15C is 22 years old and runs on the original set of batteries.
I dunno. Every single Zippo I've ever owned has been pretty robust. Those Ironman watches popular back in the 80's were fairly hardy, too.
My wife's 2nd gen iPod has seen constant and rugged use since it was bought and it still works great.
While I'm here, I'd like to also give a shoutout to my ancient HP Vectra VE, which until recently was my file/dyndns/hotline server . They don't make PCs like they used to, that's for sure.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The plastic is all yellow, and there are many blank lines on the screen, but it still works well enough to play my original copies of Tetris and Excitebike. I still suck at Excitebike.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I remember my brother dropped his Gameboy in a lake accidentally when he was younger. It was under water for a week until friends of ours with scuba gear found it.
That damn thing worked after we dried it out for a couple days and popped fresh batteries in it. It was missing a couple lines on the display, but it worked.
Granted, it was fresh water, but still.
My gameboy was next to useless after a year or so of use. There were many verical columns on the LCD that stopped displaying. Cleaning the cartridge connection didn't seem to help either. Yeah, you could drop it and it would still function, but that display would give out eventually.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I've always been amazed by the controller that came with the Atari 2600. My friends and I beat the crap out of it for years and not only did it survive, it barely showed any wear.
everything nintendo makes is tough. I never had a nintendo product break. and I've dropped all of my systems at least twice.
I remember reading a blurb in an issue of Nintendo Power (I want to say sometime in the early 90's) that featured a picture of a Game Boy that had supposedly been in a house fire. They were able to fit the Tetris cartridge back into the slot, turn the game on, and actually play it (albeit, with some loss in the pixels) even though the shell of the system was almost completely charred.
I think that's pretty hardcore.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
No, it's not. Try punching the screen because you've scored 500,000+ on Tetris and then made a stupid mistake.
Never did get to see what the full shuttle looks like.
Didn't think so.
...but I do think a "blackbox" comes instantly to mind.
I went through three original Game Boys back in the day because the LCD screens kept on losing vertical lines. These were generally near the edges of the screen, but one got so bad that nearly half the screen didn't work. I'm sure they probably still power up just fine, but if you can't see what's on the screen it doesn't really matter.
This guy's the limit!
Sadly, I haven't yet been able to put one to the test, myself, but I hear that the XO Laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project is extremely rugged. It might be a good contender.
Anyone who did knows that they're not beige ;)
A bit lightly toasted. The page has a link to a YouTube video on it as well.
Engadget report here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/02/iphone-takes-on-semi-lives-to-tell-the-tale/
One iPhone, gets left out... and flattened by a Semi tractor trailer. Took a lickin', kept on tickin'.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
These guys were as tough as they come.
http://www.retrobrick.com/moto8000.html
I got mine for Christmas the year the original came out. I also got a copy of Tennis for it. I got so mad at that game, I slammed the GB against my head and destroyed the screen. I had to pay $30 of my own money to replace it, too, which for a 13 year old in 1990 with no allowance, was rough.
When I was a kid I broke my Gameboy after a few years of having it by dropping a book on it and cracking the screen.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
It may not be a nuke, but there's a gameboy in Nintendo's NYC store that survived a barracks bombing (no clue as to which side's barracks it was, though.) It's on display there, still playing Tetris to this day.
here's a pic and a flash video of it:
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/video-fully-functional-gulf-war-gameboy#more-6645
Pretty badass...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoD6zzd35mc
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Mine still works. Whereas my E2 essentially crapped out after a year.
A few days ago I attempted to turn my original game boy on for the first time in about five years, and to my extreme disappointment it appears to be dead.
Can anyone advise me on any possible avenues of repair? I've already cleaned the battery contacts and put a fresh set of batteries in to no avail. I've got a tri-wing driver coming to me in the mail shortly, so I'll be able to open it up for a proper look, but I thought it would be wise to ask around here if anyone knows any common problems these old systems can have.
I still have mine and the only real problems with it is that there are a few marks and scratches over the A and B buttons. Other then that, it's in prime condition. Might be worth something so day.
Anyway, the original Game Boy had a small cap over the link cable connector (something that the later ones didn't), I ended up loosing that, but does anyone still have theirs? That was a pain to hang on too.
Apparently, more weapon than controller it is capable of withstanding high speed impact with stationary objects, LCD/plasma TVs, dry wall, idiots, etc.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I was a hardcore gamer back in the '90s and I would easily get upset. Point is, I broke my Game Boy from smashing the screen against my forehead repeatedly. So, as tough as this device is, I can say it's not as tough as a child's skull!
The DS screens break (top one specifically) if you fart too close to it. I still haven't broken my DSlite... yet..., but I went through 4 DS's with them in my laptop bag when they were damaged.
I also broke several GB advances, I think it's the flip open design, it stresses the screens somehow.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
http://coffeegeek.com/reviews/consumer/rancilio_silvia
That thing is freak'n indestructible. I've had one for almost seven years, use it daily - sometimes left on all day - and the damn thing just won't break. I wonder if I'll have it for the rest of my life because it shows no signs of impending failure.
I got my first gameboy when I was about 8 years old when I was going on a flight by myself to see my mom in FL. That one lasted me probably about 8 months. I remember the first time I broke it, I dropped it down the front steps at my gramma's house. The device stayed intact, but the screen wouldn't display anything except for a couple of horizontal black lines.
I got a new unit a couple months later from my dad which lasted me close to a year before it finally wouldn't turn on one day. We tried replacing the batteries, but nothing would fix it. I remember seeing my dad with it open on his desk doing some kind of surgery to it. He wound up taking the screen out of that one and transplanting it into my first one, thereby fixing it (I had to do a similar thing with my PSP, but that's another story). That gameboy still works to this day, although I made the mistake of putting the majority of my gameboy and gamegear games into the same drawer as this 8" speaker magnet that I had and none of them work anymore.
I've got really bad luck with electronics... Not including the normal upgrade process, only replacements for faulty units, I've had about 6 ipods, more than 10 cell phones, 3 palm pilots, 2 PSPs, 3 xbox360s, 2 Wiis, about 6 Laptops, a dozen monitors (CRT), countless harddrives (well over 20), and several new headphones, keyboards, mice, digital cameras, drive enclosures and powerbricks. Many were replaced under warranty, but still.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Hard drive crapped out just past the six month warranty period and Apple's not interested in doing anything with it for less than $180 + shipping + labor. I hate to say it but I'd rather spend that money on a Zune.
Posting idle brainfarts is just a product of boredom, but this making it onto the front page? I mean come on, seriously. I have to go invent a Remote Dumbass-Thwack Protocol for the originators of this one.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I have a 45 year old GE portable AM radio, and a 40+ year old Marantz stereo receiver that still works fine. Gameboys are very robust and can possibly take more physical abuse (my son's still works fine), but they have many years to go to catch up with some of these other things.
I never owned a Game Boy, but I did own a lot of other things that held up well over the years.
My first camera was a Canon Snappy 35mm. It held its own for many years. By comparison, the non-digital Elph2 I got afterwards made it through a single summer (of near daily travel and use).
The only phones that ever survived abuse were my old Nokias. I dropped them countless times and they always worked.
As much as I dislike a lot of Sony's corporate policies, their consumer products I've bought have been sturdy as hell. My Sports Walkman worked flawlessly for a decade, and the CD-Walkman I got afterwards made it through a summer of constant traveling unscathed.
It is too early to tell, but I think the 2nd-gen iPod shuffles will hold up well. There's not much to them, after all.
Something has to be said for hardware designed in the 80s. I think the new small, sleek, shiny designs lend themselves to not be as reliable over the long run; any cosmetic defects would be more apparent.
My parents have an old IBM XT. Ten years after they got it, I was using it for word processing, programming, and who knows what else. I booted it up a few weeks ago and it was running like I remembered it, over 20 years later. An old wood-paneled Kenmore TV also lasted about twenty years.
What I've heard is that in certain types of consumer electronics (especially ones where form factor, not software is likely to change), the first-generation products usually hold up extremely well. These are things like the $1000 CD players and $500 DVD players. They become cheaper as they reach a mass market due to economies of scale, but the components usually get cheaper too.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
My Vx is still ticking, but the digitizer is hosed. Almost every time I turn it on I need to realign the digitizer.
My Son has a GBA, GBA SP and GBA DS. They all still work despite being dropped, crushed in backpacks, and having been loaned to a two year old nephew. Pretty hard to beat that sort of treatment.
With the exception of the absolutely completely f9(^*(%'n useless screen on the GBA, I've been very impressed with Nintendo game machines.
Seriously, what idiot released the original GBA?
Brad
I was playing a frustrating game on my original Game Boy back in the day, got frustrated and hit it against my head--I broke the internal screen, and it couldn't display games correctly anymore. So it's not that tough...
I would have to nominate my flash drive. I left it in my pants one time, and it survived a trip through the washer and dryer. I should really have hand-washed it, though: it shrank from 1 gb to 512 mb.
I've noticed this is true of most cartridge systems. I remember back in college we obliterated a Nintendo 64 with a bat and a BB gun. No doubt alcohol was involved. Regardless, it still worked - despite the rather large hole in the middle of the console.
Man, I wish 360's were that durable. Mine just about red rings every time I use my microwave, and dammit, i love my ramen noodles!
The original Gameboy was light grey. It may appear beige becausebecause the case is old and faded but it was light gray to match it Nes cousin.
This is a stolen sig.
It's cheap, sounds cheap, but it won't die. it's been dropped (hard) numerous times, exposed to harsh conditions, nothing seems to stop it. Worst it gets is needing a little bit of pot cleaning every few years. Also, my Kenwood KR-4130 Stereo Reciever - I don't know how old it is, I just know I got it second hand 12 years ago, and I've dropped it, left it outside for months, and then left it powered on for years to drive speakers, headphones, whatever. It's heavier than air, but it still works and sounds heavenly!
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
My brother's forehead Christmas Day 1990 1
Gameboy 0
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
You just can't argue with a keyboard that has a 2mm steel plate.
The original Gameboy has some weak points:
- Buttons and d-pad use rubber pads with carbon contacts. The rubber is prone to tearing from normal wear, and the carbon contacts are susceptible to dirt buildup. I ordered aftermarket replacement pads when mine wore out.
- The LCD screen would often develop vertical lines of non-working pixels. Not sure what causes this - probably connector related.
- Dust can get in between the screen and cover plate. At least it can be opened and cleaned, unlike my GBA SP (although my SP seems to be better sealed against dust infiltration, making it a non-issue).
- Crude cartridge lock on the power switch is prone to breakage caused by rough handling. Nintendo used to be paranoid (in the original NES/GB eras) about people removing cartridges during save operations I think.
Other design issues:
- Speaker had a powerful magnetic driver. You could stick paper clips to the back of the GB or mess up CRT displays with it!
- Nonstandard AC adapter connector was a pain, but foreshadowed an era of proprietary connectors in handheld devices.
- Power LED was always on, and dimmed as battery died. This drained a bit of extra power. I guess modern systems are at least as bad, but at least they have rechargeable batteries built in now.
- Screen cover plate got scratched up, but then I couldn't seem to polish the scratches out.
The things I really liked about it:
- Even though it used 4 AA batteries, it squeezed every last drop of charge from them before they died.
- Stereo sound when headphones are used.
- Adjustable contrast.
- Standard headphone connector.
- Mine still works after almost 20 years.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
I took a trip to florida when I was a kid, and my parents bought me a baseball game for my GameBoy for the trip. I can't remember which one it was, but it was infuriating. I think I'd lost 15 games in a row in the last inning, and I just snapped in the hotel room near the state line, and punched the screen. Immediately I saw the crack and the impending Dark Water seep from within. I had to stash it for the rest of the trip because I was so embarrassed. And nothing says punishment like staring at an unusable Motocross Maniacs cartridge on a ten hour car trip...
If I remember correctly, a game boy was once pulled out of a tank during Desert Storm that had been hit by some anti-tank weaponry, caught on fire, and evacuated. It still worked despite being a bit disfigured from the extreme heat. You can also flush a game cube down the toilet without serious damage.
Remember the Gamecube car test we posted a few years ago?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEvlWQ5ULCg
Same with original Nintendo DS, when closed mode it will withstand most drops.
A lobster tank killed one of mine, back in the day...
The Nintendo World Store keeps this Gameboy on display. At least there aren't missing scorches where the hands would be, so maybe this one came back with owner intact?
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I nominate the IBM Model M keyboard and its brethren as being among the most bulletproof gadgets ever made. They weigh 5 pounds, mostly because the keys are mounted on a solid steel plate. And not only are they indestructible, but they're delightful to type on.
That's odd. Me, and almost everyone I know, had exactly the opposite experience. The joysticks that came with the Atari for were notorious for being easy to break. The problem was the plastic 'spring' that they used inside was prone to snapping. And, unfortunately the plastic was too oily for glue to fix. Many of the third party controllers of the day were extremely durable though. The Wico bat stick, and the slick stick come to mind. The slick stick actually used auto parts in it's construction. The handle was a tire valve. The paddles were even worse. Luckily, the paddles were just a generic off the shelf potentiometer, so they were (and still are) super easy to repair.
I don't know about everyone else but my Ti-83 still works after 10 years of abuse. Those are some hard calculators to break.
My HP Laserjet 4si is made out of Gameboy bones. That damn thing has close to 3 million pages on it and I barely have to do anything to it EVER!
The game.
I'd agree that the Game Boy is tough. A friend's brother was a U.S. Marine on the ground in the combat phase of Desert Storm. He took his Game Boy. When he came back from his tour of duty, the Game Boy was absolutely caked and brownish black with dirt, mud, and sand in it everywhere, yet it still worked perfectly.
If you want people to agree with you slashdot is definitely the wrong place to ask. People who post comments on
I loved my gameboy, and it's one of the most revolutionary line of electronics.
But Gameboys had massive recalls, and were bulky clumsy fisherprice style electronics. They did huge things for gaming and were damn near ubiquitious, but they are not really as tough as the tough huge plastic shell would suggest.
Kinda thing sometimes that nintendo fans are just more nostaligic than fans of Sony or Sega or MS. After all, many of the Wii's best games are simply rehashes of 20 year old plots and characters. Enjoyable as hell, but where are the new third party franchises? Where's the Uncharted or Gears of War?
Something about that knack to love the past leads a lot of nintendo fans to remember their old consoles like I remember old girlfriends. Just an interesting aspect of things, I think.
It wasn't quite a semi, but my old kyocera phone got run over a few times and kept on ticking. I dropped it in the middle of the road during a rainstorm. When I came back ~ 20 mins later, it was sitting in a puddle getting run over. Two days later it was working fine, but minus the antenna and with some embedded stones in the plastic. Put the thing through the wash cycle twice too and that never stopped it either. Should never have "updagraded". New phone lasted less than a year.
...no two people are not on fire.
Has anyone mentioned these yet?
I heard one of the 9/11 rescue workers found one in the rubble, and it was still working.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Gotta love the new site software that has made slashdot slower than it has ever been. I'd love to see graphs of the performance change.
Also gotta love needing to click on 'use classic system' every time (because I don't allow javascript). I guess it would be rocket science to have it just revert back to the classic system automatically. I hear computers are good at that automatic stuff.
Often, products are engineered with an obvious short life span. Cars are an example. Bad plastics that become brittle or become brittle are often used to intentionally make a product fall apart. The right plastics exist for amazing quality, but I believe that every time I see crappy plastic it is done intentionally.
My mom was angry at one of my younger brothers for spending so much time playing video games. She ripped out the cords to his NES and threw it out a second story window. It landed on a rock wall below and bounced into the dirt. Ten minutes later, he had plugged it back in and was playing again.
Yes, my old green screen friend has been through hell and back and I have found that it's smallest successor, the Micro, to be just as tough if not more so. Metal construction, replaceable faceplates, no parts to lose... it was designed to be rugged and portable. Nintendo knows their hardware will need to withstand a beating, and design them with that in mind.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
- The original GameBoy.
- The HP 1xC series like the HP15C.
- GE Portable AM radio.
- Pet rock. (I'm not sure if that counts as a gadget or pet.)
- Zippo lighter
- Ironman watches
- 2nd gen iPod. (well - it's an Apple, but...)
- Atari 2600 controller. (but that's not a complete device)
- Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. (Or why not the Ericsson SH888/I888, also robust enough to take a truck)
- Zen Jukebox
- Palm Vx (or it's next gen siblings m505/m515 will probably do also)
- Rancilio Silvia espresso machine.
- Some 40+ year old Maranz stereo receiver
- Canon Snappy 35mm camera
- A bunch of early computers from the IBM XT and so... Probably because the only thing needing cooling was the power supply.
- squier electric guitar
- The old boring but utterly reliable phones leased from your phone company (probably would have survived WW III without noticing...
- And a device of my own - The Hasselblad 500C camera.
But ultimately - it's more about nostalgia than anything reliable even if a few gadgets on the list may be reliable.If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
...my step fathers Toshiba notebook (the correct name eludes me at the moment...I believe it is the ToughBook or something similar) has taken quite a beating. Multiple drops, multiple times walked on, etc.
In my experience though, the most indestructible piece of hardware was my buddy's old Sprint cellphone. That thing was dropped in a toilet 3 times (don't ask), run over twice, stepped on god knows how many times, and dropped on hard pavement even more times than that. Other than a couple of minor scratches, it worked flawlessly until my friend switched from Sprint to Verizon and got a new phone. Nearly 3 years of service, and it still turns on (and the original battery still holds a charge!)
There was actually a movie in which the main character had the same phone and made passing comments about its durability.
Living With a Nerd
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the toughbook yet. I had one for a summer job camping and monitoring wells. That thing got straight brutalized - dropped constantly (while on and the HDD never seemed to mind) - copious amounts of water poured on it basically everyday - chucked into the back of a truck consistently. We treated it like we were supposed to get it to break (mostly in the hopes that it would break, and we could have the company get us a new one) but it never did.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
My basic HP Scientific calculator is still working after 15 moves, 10 years of college, and two years of high school. I bought it back in 1984.
While Nintendo products always seem to buckle under the weight of obscure threats (like the dusty connectors that required us to blow on our NES cartridges until we passed out), they always seem to be quite resilient to physical trauma.
Electronic Gaming Monthly printed a special article on the Game Boy Advance just before its initial release. They were given a white demo unit and decided to put it through a few tests to see how tough it was. At one point, they flushed it down the toilet. When the little white wonder sprung back to life after being dried off, they nicknamed it "Jesus".
Before the age of YouTube, a video circulated around of PlayStation fanboys putting a Gamecube out of its misery. I don't know. I guess the youth of America had nothing to do before YouTube was around. Ignoring that, they tied the Gamecube to the end of their car and dragged it for over a mile. Keep in mind that a Gamecube was, essentially, a DVD based product with lasers that needed to be aligned, covers that needed to close, and any number of semi-modern conveniences. The Little Cube That Could still worked when they unhooked it from the car and plugged it back in. In the end, they did what any sane human being would do and hit it with a hammer.
My NES still works after lord knows how long, though I replaced the cartridge connector a few years ago. I stumbled across my old gray Game Boy as well, and it still plays games. Come to think of it, I've never seen a cartridge-based console that didn't work unless it had been melted with an iron. It happens.
I've seen two Game Boys stop working after the screen protector was glued back on :( Other than that they're really solid machines.
When I was at my parents this xmas, I found my old Mattel Football II (the Mean Joe Green version). I put in some batteries and the thing still works like a champ...
Maglite ftw.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
The GameBoy may be pretty tough, but some things cannot be 100% child proofed. My kids lost the battery cover to the GameBoy Color within a year of purchase, so it still works, but the batteries are held by masking or duct tape, whichever is handy at the time. The DS, however, was dropped on the floor shortly after acquisition and one of the hinges broke on it. It was playable for a couple of years, but the top display has finally given in last week. Now kids can only play GBA games on it, since they only require the bottom display.
The toughest product ever is the AK-47.
This sig is false.
http://www.usa.canon.com/html/cameras_slr/eos_1v.html
The EOS-1v is probably the toughest product ever made. Instead of relying on aneecdotal evidence I look to the wide support of profesional film photographers. In addition you can see from here the technical aspects of this camera. It has a magnesium alloy body with all seams sealed with silicon. This means you can shoot in inclement weather including pooring rain without any problems if you use a sealed lens. Now if you drop it the lens might break but the body itself should be good to go. Of course the best course of action is to always use a neck strap.
It never had any of these problems such as buttons breaking and vertical lines. I played it all the time, even had the SUPERBOY (battery pack, external speakers and magnifying glass) and nothing ever happened. It was a tank, I'm sure it still works, I sold it at a garage sale when I got my Gameboy Color, then my Gameboy Advance, then I sold them and gave up with Nintendo portables.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone
:)
We still have one hooked up in the garage, it's one of the original black ones from the 50s (the number label on the dial still has a word-number combo on it!)...still works like a charm. I swear you could club baby seals all winter with the handset and call just fine come spring
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I'm still amazed whenever I get up at the toughness of this little clock.
What's the last Microsoft project that Bill Gates spent considerable time writing code for before his managerial duties took away his time for coding?
:)
The portable, handheld battery-operated TRS-80.
Solid as a rock. There are tales of people skipping them across concrete and they still work.
And as far as the code? Bill must have done something right, because as of a few years ago (I last heard this in 2005 or 2004) there are still some of these beasts in use. Not much computing power, but they have an RS-232 port. The O/S is flexible enough that there are corporations using the device still. Apparently, the thing is so tough that there are off-shore oil platforms running some ancient equipment that dumps data through an RS-232 port, and the crews that have to service them use the portable TRS-80's to grab the data and take it back to their offices where they upload it to their PC's. More modern equipment apparently chokes after constant exposure to salt air, constant shock, and, well, oil workers. They're tough guys, you know.
While someone has mentioned the zippo, where's the love for maglites? I've literally seen someone turn one on WHILE it was on fire. That's hardxcore.
In contrast, my Nintendo DS left hinge crack after 3 months. And believe me or not, this is my 3rd DS. How fragile.. They claim that they fixed the problem. But the crack on my DS show otherwise.
The toughest gadget I have ever encountered is the controller for the NES. The original rectangular one, not the stupid rounded one they released later. That thing was indestructible. When frustrated we would hurl it at walls, at floors, at televisions. We went through a lot of walls, floors and televisions, but never had to replace the controller once. When I was a little bratling I even took a bath with my beloved NES controller on several occasions, and after drying out it still worked every time. Can the Gameboy make that claim?
My bibi gun. It really won the match pretty well. I had a fun childhood.
That just proves that, no matter how tough the Gameboy may be, your head is harder!
;) .
(Come to think of it, We shouldn't be surprised at the density of your noggin, being that you chose to use your head as a hammer as opposed to the wall or some other, non-organic instrument of destruction
Still, made for a funny anecdote...
The original Blackberries, the Mobitex 850s, were bricks. Back at RIM we used to drop-kick them across the office for testing.
It's not a real keyboard if you can't beat a man to death with it.
Um, hypothetically, I mean.
Thanks to a cheaply designed holster, my Blackberry 7510 underwent daily "is local gravity still in effect?" testing, sometimes many times a day.
No problems with it, the casing is scratched up badly, but it still works.
My replacement 7520 undergoes a similar test every couple weeks, and holds up just fine.
I know that my Gameboy SP made it through a year in Iraq while in my pocket. Still works today.
They knew that kids would be using them and if our experience was going to be anything like the NES there was going to be some serious controller slamming. Only this time the controller is also the console. I have to say that my DS Fat is still kicking after having it for several years and using it a lot. Now that it has the R4 in it I use it more.
Can I bum a sig?
The Game Boy was pretty tough, I admit. The other items in that "article", though, are significantly less so. A three-year-old phone? A 6-year-old Mac? C'mon, that stuff is still way too young to be deemed tough. These things need to stand the test of time.
Besides, there's all sorts of old tech which stood the test of time. Rather than rummage through your pile of unsold stuff for eBay, why not pick a few items which are infamous for their longevity?
The IBM Model M Keyboard is the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of durable technology. Bonus points in that it's still useful, and even preferred by some to this day (though I'm not among them - the feel is nice, the noise is not).
A variety of old 80s computers: the Mac Classic, IBM XT, NeXTcube, etc. These things tend to sit around for years and still work just fine.
The point is, why make such a list with tech that's newer than 2000?
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
OK I'll agree a bit to the IBM Model M keyboard...
that aside, I remember *years* ago when Fisher Price made a Tape Player that I distinctly recall *throwing* down a flight of stairs, with no effect on its functionality.
But I definitely agree that toys (products in general) are much less durable than they used to be.
I have an old original gameboy from way back in the day, it still works for the most part but I wouldn't say indestructible because sound is broken. :/ I think it's a connection problem with the volume control because sometimes you can mess around with it and find a spot where it works.
Weaksauce as they say...
No really. http://i31.tinypic.com/jk7nsm.jpg
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
I have a Kyocera K10 Royale. Certainly seems sturdy enough, though I wouldn't want to test it against a car....
I don't know about Technology (although the Wii remote would be pretty high up on that list... or generally anything designed by Nintendo... which I swear must have a contract with the makers of LEGO), but the strongest thing I've ever known is Snap-On tools.
:P.
I swear... that company must be sacrificing souls to some demon in order to make them that damn-near-physics-defyingly strong
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
I used to hit my gameboy all the time when I was mad at it, but I tried that a few hours after getting a Sony GameGear and it broke the screen!
Contrary to popular belief, game cartridges are not 8-track tapes (or core memory); there is nothing in them that is stored magnetically or that could be damaged by a magnet. More likely, the connectors have oxidized.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
My ancient Moto startac was dropped in snow, under water (stuck in a toilet no less) for hours and both times worked fine after being dried out. A friend of mine threw his against a wall and, after taping the case together, it still worked as I recall.
The tradeoff of course, was the damn antenna on those snapped off if you so much as looked at it funny.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I would challenge the Game Boy to a crush off with the old HP-21 calculator, they were near indestructible.
For a piece of equipment that really has the hell beat out of it... my father's old Jonsered chainsaw has, miraculously, continued to work to this day. He used the chainsaw for over 25 years... and not just casual wood splitting. The chainsaw single handedly chopped all the trees to build a log cabin, chopped all the fallen trees on the land that covered the trails over those years, split logs, dropped other dead trees... he'd wield it like a maniac, too... using one hand at times and swinging it to cut small brush. He finally bought a new chainsaw a year ago... but only because the old chainsaw was burning oil badly, but it still works. Amazing for a tool thats purpose requires it to be bombarded by dirt, wood chips and sawdust.
Even though it's not totally modern, sucks at surfing the web, does everything adequately, not terrifically, this phone is indestructible. It's been dropped on tile, pavement, concrete, into mud, and bounced out of my pocket one night while running last winter. It was found by a dog walker who saw the screen flashing under leaves and snow when it rang.
If there's a way to kill this phone I can't find it. Battery is still good too after two years of hard, hard, use.
Then again, the connector from the charger to the phone sucked from day one and has always been a sketchy proposition.
Three Squirrels
From the lowly 850 to the 8700...dropped numerous times on concrete, off subway platforms, high speed flying out of pockets into stone walls, rolled over by cars, dropped into toilets...
Still worked. Have to give a vote to this one.
I'd vote for this as one of the toughest ever made. One time I got home late at night and somehow left the phone on the roof of the car. Overnight, it snowed about five inches. I didn't feel like shoveling the driveway, so I just got in, gunned the engine and after a few back-and-forth runs, made it out onto the road. Got to work, couldn't find the phone. Finally, after I got home again, I took my cordless house phone outside and dialed the Nokia. Underneath the packed snow, under the car, there was a green glow and a faint ring. I dug the Nokia out, wiped it off, and it still worked. Sure, the stubby antenna had broken (easily replaced) but the screen wasn't cracked and it could still make calls. I still have that phone in a drawer somewhere and in the battery on the back there are still deep grooves from the grit on the tires rubbing through the plastic.
What really got me was that I figured I had driven over the thing about eight times.
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
I don't recall ever dropping it or otherwise abusing it. I guess they all weren't indestructable.
It's the same color as concrete, and about as heavy. But it's also about as durable. Mine still works just fine.
"Teach a man to build a fire, and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life."
The gameboy is tough and all, but it's chump change compared to the Pentex K1000 (depending on the originating factory of course.) Those have literally been through wars and back. I don't mean a single bomb exploded near it, I mean shrapnel, dropping, being crushed, and they still work like a champ. Many a modern photographer cut their teeth on that durable monster.
My little sister threw my Gameboy in the bathtub when she was a few years old. I got a new Gameboy out of the experience, because it stopped working. But, nearly a decade later, I found it in a drawer somewhere, and when supplied with fresh batteries, the darned thing powered up, despite some corrosion!
If business electronics can be included then I want to add Sparc Station 5. I droped on six feet off a server rack and the server stayed on and the OS was running like a champ. I just picked it up and put it back.
toughest product ever. Still the number one choice of DJs the world over, and they started making them in the 70s. The original design has stayed the same, with minor changes over the years. Toughest, Product, Ever.
"Hmm. Sounds like a user issue to me."
Ask him if everything works on him?
These were the only joysticks that could beat the Atari controllers. These things were made of inexplicabium. I used it for more than a decade, and it still works perfectly (and, I was NOT gentle). Now THATs engineering.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
I've never succeeded in actually breaking one. Granted after 15 years some buttons are less responsive, but countless drops, beatings, button smashing, etc. haven't gotten through them.
I have two fully-working Commodore 64's, one of which is now a plaything for my 7-year old son and has been for a few weeks. This includes an original Commodore monitor and 1541 floppy drive. I also have a working plus4 in the closet, and if that wasn't enough, a working PET in the basement. By my count, that's roughly 25 years old.
:)
In fact, I have quite a batch of older consumer electornics that all work perfectly:
* A 2XL
* A Timex Sinclair 1000
* An Atari 800XL with tap drive
I should point out, all of these were original purchases by me (or more precisely, my parents in most cases).
Still, on balance, I go with any Commodore computer technology as toughest. You could fling one into the Sun and it'd come back with little more than a nice tan
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
I've noticed my Palm Treo 700 is a lot tougher looking than one would think. I've dropped it on concrete about 10 times and it still works fine. It once even fell out of my truck onto the road while I was driving. The battery compartment flew out and the stylus and blank filler card were ejected but after putting it back together it was fine.
I'm almost willing to believe these things would stop a bullet.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Not all, but some of them are damn near indestructible.
:)
Even some of the newer higher-tech ones.
I've got one of these. I could probably drive a truck over it, no prob. Not gonna try it, though.
http://www.tech21nyc.com/triac.html
For modern kit, I'd put some money on The TDS Recon http://www.tdsway.com/products/recon. I have seen one thrown off a building and they keep one in a fish tank in their lobby http://www.tdsway.com/products/nomad/fish_tank2
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If not-quite-consumer products are allowed, then how about HP calculators? They've been around longer than Model M keyboards, and in far tougher environments.
I remember when I was young and at that time I was a Nintendo Power subscriber... There was a kid who sent out pictures of his gameboy that survived a fire... The buttons had melted and the unit was unusable but you could still see a game running on the picture. The editor noted tha they replaced the unit as 'courtesy' but I was amazed to see it almost survived.
Well not quite actually, unlike a brick a Gameboy or even Gameboy Colour/Advance is almost indestructible, I actually remember someone trying to smash one up, by dropping it from great heights, breaking various bits of plastic off it, and even after throwing it onto a roof and watching it come speeding back down to earth, the thing still worked, only after taking to it with a hammer to smash the screen did anything stop working, but even then the power and speakers still worked (obviously). The only thing that took it down was uncasing it and removing the chips!
The holes in reality are coming The cake is a lie... The cake is a lie... The cake is a lie... The cake is a lie..
The Telecaster (American made) is tough as nails, and if you run it through a Mesa Boogie, Dual-Rectifier head, it can sound like nails, too.
I remember in many movies from the 50s, 60's and 70s how the sturdy Bell phones were used to beat a character to death. Those were some incredibly durable and solid phones.
I've broken Gameboys...but the OLPC looks tough.
No sig today...
I actually remember when I dropped mine back in sixth grade (circa 1991) on my way to the bus stop. I remember turning it on and I had lost a whole row of pixels about a fifth of the way up, the whole way across the screen. Despite the lost pixels, the thing never had an issue playing games!
My original GameBoy stopped working right about the time the GameBoy Pocket was released...
It's not so much a story about tough tech, as a fluff piece about individual pieces of gear that have happened to survive various accidents/incidents.
The only thing that can break a Gameboy is another Gameboy...or Chuck Norris.
I think the toughest product ever made is the ORIGINAL (non-analog) PSX controller. I subjected mine to quite severe punishments (slamming into the concrete, applying torsion, biting, etc.) out of frustration with certain games, and they still work as good as new. The gameboy is too weak to compare.
I bought my mom a Kodak LS743 digital camera for Christmas several years ago. Then she foolishly allowed me to borrow it when I went on vacation. During the course of that trip I absent mindedly set the thing on top of the car while getting in and left it there. Several miles later, after merging onto the freeway, I heard it slide allllll the way to the back of the roof and then launch wildly off before smashing into the pavement. Looking in the rearview I saw it skip and bounce along the road, and saw what I took to be parts shattering off of it. I pulled over and managed to retrieve it before anyone behind me could run it over. The only things that had come off during its 70mph thrill ride were the button on the back (the mechanism it covered was intact), and the battery along with the memory card had flown out. After snapping everything back in place, it was in perfect working order with only a mild case of roadburn to show for it. If only her car had been so easy to fix after I borrowed that and annihilated a deer with it... http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-locale=en_US&pq-path=1764
Saw a HP-25C calculator still work after falling off an 11 story dorm.
Problem exists between keys and device?
I woke up one morning to find my gameboy covered in battery acid. The batteries were well within experation date and placed in the correct configuration. It was odd. After cleaning it off externally, no internal inspection I'm sure it was a mess, it would attempt to display turn all black and die shortly after; with new batteries. I dragged it everywhere I went and if I had to guess a cause I would say dirt/dust from the playground.
I still have mine and it runs fine. I think it is well over 10 years old. Not a problem in the world. My brothers had the plastic screen cover fall off because he repeatedly dropped in on concrete, but it still runs. Strongest system ever built!
The Gameboy is tough. My favourite pop culture reference to the device is in Kenny Roger's "The Gambler": "Said, if youre gonna play the Gameboy, ya gotta learn to play it right."
And that was 1978, yo.
What the fuck do Engadget put in their webpages to make the browser suck up 100% CPU? even on a 3GHZ P4 system.
Yet another website owned by some fuckwit who's more interested in style than content, and the webmaster goes along with it because "he who pays is right" and they don't want to lose their good paying job/client... jeez, I always avoid Engadget links because their site sucks balls.
Spirit
/.!
Opportunity
Come on,
Also, I'd vote for Honda and Toyota cars, and as at least one other commenter pointed out, the AK-47.
Toughest electronic item I've owned. I got it in 1996, and it's worked like a champ ever since.
Comment of the year
"If you ever saw one that was broken, it's because it lost a boxing match with a nuclear bomb -- on points."
Well, when I was a little kid I was going out to some family function with my parents and I dropped the gameboy onto the ground on the driveway. It was probably about a 3 foot drop onto concrete. The screen no longer worked. Looking at it quite a long time later, it was some internal problem, in that it wasn't just that the LCD ribbon cable disconnected or anything, something was definitely damaged, causing it to no longer display anything.
I was pretty surprised to see this article since my own experience showed a single drop could kill the Gameboy, so...
My original game boy lasted a decade. It survived more drops than I would like to remember. It met its sad fate when it accidentally got hit by a golf club in the LCD screen (not my doing). Technically you can say it still runs - if you put batteries in the games still start, play sound, etc. They are pretty tough.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
They actually built this one for Construction workers. I've dropped mine various times very hard. From a bicycle onto the pavement at full speed, onto tiled floors, etc. It still works A-OK. I've still got mine and if it weren't for me trying to merge my PDA (Palm) and my Phone into one - which I did with a Blackberry 7130G - I'd be still using it. They manage to score above original pricing on Ebay at times. Before getting the Blackberry I actually considered getting a new shell and a new LiIon Battery for my M35i and skip another round of updating.
I think it's safe to say that it's the toughest cellphone ever built.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I was airborne infantry in the US Army when these things came out. My Gameboy went all over the place with me and survived more than 30 jumps. Sadly, it was destroyed when my rucksack and I parted company at about 150 meters above a rocky drop zone. :(
Seppuku: Your solution to my problems!
The screen had a a couple of vertical lines that were permanently on. It was a used unit that I bought off a buddy back in the day. Other than that it still worked fine. I don't even remember what happened to it. I still have the Tetris game cartridge that I use occasionally in my Gameboy Advance.
http://tabo.aurealsys.com/archives/2006/10/04/ibm-model-m-keyboard-still-working-after-killing-a-man-with-it/
Mythbusters-style. You did say "hypothetically", right?
My original game boy had the plastic screen protector fall out but that didn't stop it from working. The gaming experience was actually improved as there wasn't a scratched plastic cover over the LCD obstructing the view.
The Psion Organiser II came in 3 different versions. I have one still. It's made from metal and very, very hard plastic.. It's like a brick..
My father accidentally shot my Gameboy with an arrow (field tip) during his target practice one day. The arrow was lodged right into the heart of the device and even made a bump on the other side. Once the arrow was removed the Gameboy still worked perfectly.
The next winter, I accidentally dropped the same Gameboy into deep snow. It stayed there until the snow melted a few weeks later.
My Gameboy still works today.
The real story here is Nintendo's customer service. I had an original gameboy in which 4 rechargeable batteries had basically exploded. I thought it was completely broken so I called Nintendo and they replaced it no questions asked. I didn't even have to send them the broken one, which I tried a few years later and it still worked.
http://www.antiqueathlete.com/penn-state-football.jpg
The battery compartment cover on my wife's original gameboy broke shortly after she got it. But that's only one data point, of course, and it does still work, you just have to remove the duct tape to replace the batteries.
Come to think of it, the power jack became intermittent shortly after that.
Never broke a screen on it, though, and I've broken at least four on various Palm Pilots since the mid-nineties.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Mine didn't survive the Randy Savage elbow drop.. The screen turned all sorts of funny colors and cracked.. I got so pissed off trying to finish Super Mario that I threw it on the bed, climbed onto a desk and gave it the Randy Savage elbow drop.
"He Who Laughs Last, Is Just A Hand In The Bush" - Ozzy Osbourne
I have an original Fisher Price Garage. The thing was bought in the mid 70s for my older brother and it was handed down to me. It's now over 30 years old. It's been played with by countless numbers of children over the years and apart from being very scuffed up is in working order. My own kids love it. I suspect my own grandkids will be playing with it many years from now.
That, or my vote would be for anything Tonka made in the 70s. Still have several examples of those as well.
drop your ipod or whatever into the toilet, is to take out the batteries
Oh, you mean those incredibly hard to replace batteries that Steveo charges you $66 to replace, and even then he doesn't give you back your iPod, but a refurbished one instead?
Yeah, those will be really easy to rip out in a flash while fumbling with the slick toilet water on the case!
The Motorola Dyna TAC 8000 series phones - Many tales of these things being indestructible. Dropped down flights of stairs, off of scaffoldings many stories in the air, dropped in toilets, swimming pools, and sewers, and successfully being used as a projectile weapon against machine (car windows usually) and human alike. It seemed nothing short of hurling them into the sun could break them (a regular "fire" wouldn't do. I've seen partially melted units come into my old shop that were still fully functional).
Suncom Slik Stick - I had a pair of these Atari/Commodore compatible joysticks for my Atari 2600 in the mid 80s, then moved them to my Atari ST's and Amiga. When I got rid of them in 1997, they were still in full working order; amazing considering the sheer number of hours I put on them.
These things were regularly hurled against walls, entertainment centers, floors, and people during heated gaming... especially when "the computer cheated!!!"
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
My wife's mom still had her dial phone from the 40s. Under the old contract, so long as she kept making the monthly payments, they had to sell her rotary service. There were only a few dozen people left in that county with rotaries when her mom finally had to go to a nursing home a few years ago- drove the phone company nuts having to keep gear to support it. Phone worked til the day it went away, after surviving six teenagers and their friends.
I had this one transistor radio in the 60s that was indestructable. Wish I'd kept it, but I gave it away. Dunno how many times that thing came off my bike going anywhere from 10 to 25MPH, and still worked. I bet the same guy did the case for the Gameboy.
Finally, I have several Kalamazoo tube amps from the 60s. Worst case they needed new filter caps and tubes; a couple still have everything original, and still sound great no matter what guitar is plugged into them. I've seen old Gibsons and Fenders from the 50s still going strong with next to no maintenance. Some have fallen off a truck more than a few times.
But... we bought several Gameboys right after they came out for my two kids and me. They're each on their third owners (hand me down network), still get played with all the time, and still work great.
No. I don't. I got one when I was 8, and then had the screen broken by the next day because it fell out my (hideously large) coat pocket.
My Nokia 3660? Out the window at 65MPH a few times and it still worked!
Hard drive crapped out just past the six month warranty period and Apple's not interested in doing anything with it for less than $180 + shipping + labor. I hate to say it but I'd rather spend that money on a Zune.
Yeah, because I'm sure Microsoft would be jumping to help you with a failed hard drive in an out of warranty device that they sell. That's downright funny.
Its a hard drive, and its out of warranty.
Have you looked at the cost of the replacement part? For example according to google results the 60GB Toshiba 1.8" HD, from the 60GB ipod (toshiba MK6000GAH) ranges from $171 - $199. Seems like Apple isn't really that out of line there.
You can get a 60GB 1.8" HD for as low as $105... but I couldn't speculate if it would fit into an ipod. And this is where the next bit of advice crops up...
Have you looked into 3rd party repair shops? Its out of warranty, so what do you care if it isn't apple that fixes it? Especially if a repair shop can do it for less? They also tend to buy up dead ipods for parts so they can offer used screens and used hard drives as replacement parts for substantially less coin. They would also be in a position of knowing whether they can use a different cheaper model HD in your ipod.
Or you could attempt a DIY repair. (Hey its slashdot and what else you gonna do? Toss it?) There are instructions and youtube videos for getting it open, and once its open, swapping the HD is pretty straightforward.
Bullshit, iPods have a 12 month warranty.
I broke a game boy on my forehead Christmas Day of 1994.
Well. I broke the screen. Rest of it (still) works fine.
Stupid Donkey Kong...
I also still have a working Gameboy and GBA but neither of them have suffered quite that much.
I have carried my Lexar JumpDrive (1GB) in the right cargo pocket of my BDU pants for at least five years now. That entailed: multiple 'vacations' in Iraq, Nevada, Arizona, Qatar, Hawaii, Iceland, France, etc. etc.
Where I live, the temp ranges from 100F to -50F. I've worn out 4 sets of BDU pants in the same time that I've owned the jumpdrive. I've had to change the 'unclassified' sticker on it 3 times, but the red plastic underneath is still shiny.
I work with lots of chemicals at work (Paint, MEK, acetone, trichlorethane, naptha, ass't other solvents, jet fuel, hydraulic oil, etc). I've come close to throwing out pairs of pants because of spills, but the jumpdrive stills works great. I still have files on it that I put there the day I bought it.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
I still have an Apple IIe kicking in my basement. It's outlasted every non-Apple/Mac machine I've ever owned (except that bloody Performa...). And all three of my Game Boys (mini, color, and original) work just fine, though the glue on the screen covering of the original finally dried out and it fell off a few months ago. It was a sad day, to be sure.
Some of the old Nokia and Motorola 'candy bar' (more like brick) style phones are incredibly tough. I had an old motorola V120c, and it got smashed around in a backpack full of textbooks, dropped into gravel, and finally kicked off a balcony, and it still worked fine when I got rid of it for a new phone. The old Palm M105 handhelds were also nigh-indestructible. My old palm was subjected to much of the same treatment as the Moto v120, including the trip off the balcony, and it still works to this very day. The Gameboy Advance SP is also very durable; one of my friends has used his as a throwing weapon, and dented steel lockers with it. The hinge hasn't even loosened from that.
ahha, there's what i was looking for and it was mattel as i thought :)
:) I added a speaker kill switch and earphone jack so it wouldn't beep during classes. I also added a battery jack to hook it a Emergency locator beacon battery from one of my dad's planes for extended (as in years!) play when mobility not so important ;)
Mine still survives too even after being modded for Highschool
Back when you didn't buy phones, but could only rent them from Ma Bell, they were indestructible. Simple enlightened self-interest: the folks that manufactured them were responsible for maintaining them.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I had an Apple IIe and it worked for 15 year, after been left out on the rain for two days. I only had to wait it to dry and turn it on. Surprisingly tuff.
I have to say that the Leica camera's have to be the toughest product ever made. I inherited an M3 from my grandfather (made around 1954) and it still works get. I also read on wiki that the Leica SLR is rumored to have survived a 25,000 foot drop from a F-4 Phantom II fighter jet - now thats impressive.
Built like tanks. Just as heavy.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
My Logitech USB Optical Mouse Model Number: MBT96a.
It's almost seen as much beer as I have...
I wouldn't trade it for anything...
Well except for a new Logitech product.
Great experiances with their products, got a 2.1 speaker setup with a 6" sub. That has gotten the cops at my door more than once (and while yes I was living in an apartment at the time, it was this fat lady that lived across a fairly busy street in a trailer park that called them, 3 times over 6 months). And of course my newest Logitech product, the G-15 Gaming Keyboard... There enough dried up alcohol and weed in between the keys to put an elephant down. Good times...
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Maybe yours does. Mine says 180 days, and the folks at the Apple store confirmed that when I brought it in just for kicks.
Well, duh-I heard that during the testing for the thing, they gave it to Steve Ballmer.
In a room without any chairs.
I friend of mine when back at uni used to regularly clean all the finger grease off his calculator by scrubbing it in a bucket of soapy water with no ill effects. Once after a particularly back engineering exam he threw it against the wall and kicked it down a flight of stairs. It didn't improve his results but he felt better and the calculator was fine.
pithy comment
My original Game Boy had the batteries explode in it when I was a kid, leaving it completely incapacitated.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
http://www.apple.com/support/products/applecareipod.html
That might be the deal now. It wasn't when I bought mine. You can put your serial number in elsewhere on the Apple site to get the details of your warranty, and I assure you it doesn't tell me I had a year of coverage.
I know lots of people who have iPods and love them. I wouldn't buy another one based on my experience. $400 is way too much for something that broke in month 7 of ownership.
The problem with gameboy's was LCD rot (if you're talking about the original), I imagine others will have this problem as well as time goes on and pixels go dead (unless they've fixed this) but it takes a while to happen.
My 10+ year old gameboy still works. In fact, I occasionally fire it up and play some zelda for s h i t s and giggles.
Fisher-Price used to make some really heavy duty kids toys, think along the lines of that steel reinforced foam plastic stuff they use in milk crates.
Q. How do I sell all this junk that I haven't lost after moving 3 times?
A. Write a BS article about all the items that glorifies each knick. And then post them on ebay.
Is it just coincidence that a seller on ebay has all these items for sale at the same time?
My brother and I both bought a gameboy, mine new, his used about a year later. My nieces play with them, over the network even! These are TOUGH gear. I've yet to have a laptop survive more than 3 months past the warranty period, or a cell phone perform after 2 years.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
Traynor amplifiers. Tascam 112 and Revox B77 tape recorders. Sansui 5000 stereos. Panasonic VCRs (the remotes break long before the machine wears out). Technics SL-1200 turntables. Apple Macintosh SE. HP Laserjet II B&W printers. GameBoy Color. Compaq Deskpros.
I still own one. My original Gameboy had the LCD screen get lines in it, and stops working unless you jiggle the AA batteries just so and then power comes back on.
The Atari Lynx uses more batteries and eats more power than a Gameboy, but it is more durable plus it came with a color LCD. It also weighs more, and has the graphics and sounds of an Amiga 1000 in a hand-held case. Plus the carts for the Lynx are wafer thin and don't need to be cleaned as often as the Gameboy carts.
Also I have a few Game.com units by Tiger, the original touch screen handheld, they last forever as well. Except when I lose the stylus pen, but a finger or retractable ink pen works just as well as a stylus. As a bonus the Game.com has built in PDA like software.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
As someone who bashed the living fuck out of his video games as a kid, I can attest to this. I threw the damn thing from the top floor window of a house on the top of a hill and didn't manage to scratch it. Nothing else I've owned has matched that thing in durability (though most of my other Nintendo products came close).
It's a shame more recent consoles aren't as durable with their clamshell designs and moving parts. Still, Nintendium is clearly one of the strongest materials known to man.
Taking into account how much force you apply to the consumer product, I would say the legendary TAC-2 joystick for the Commodore 64 is even tougher than the Game Boy!
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with catsup.
Seems to me that based on Ars Technica's torture test, the original iPod Nano would win. That said, mine stopped working after it went through the washer for the third time.
And, frankly, the iPod worked a hell of a lot better when it was working than my GameBoy did.
We play together
The TAC-2 and I
Until only the TAC-2 remains
I still have several working TI-99/4A's and other hardware from that era (i.e. a Tomy Tutor console), a couple of TI-99/2's (yes prototypes). Considering how many working TI systems I'm aware of, I think it has a 20 year or so head start on the gameboy.
after cleaning some sand out of the usb port it worked just fine.
I got my gameboy ages ago.. so long ago I can't remember what year.
That beige gameboy stayed in full working order until one day 5 years ago when I was going to toss it and decided.. why not break it for fun if its going into the dustbin anyway.
It took me 2 hours with a hammer and ice pick to do any significant damage.
The summary only barely does it justice.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You guys ain't got consumer-protection laws ?
In many countries companies routinely offer "warranties" that are less than the minimum guaranteed by consumer protection, hoping that gullible consumers will believe that the limits in the guarantees has any actual effect.
For example, in Norway Apple also offers "6 months warranty", despite obviously being fully aware that infact there's compulsory 2 years of warranty against defects in materials or workmanship, and even 5 years for items meant to last significantly longer (like cars, refrigerators or tvs)
The gameboy might very well be one of the toughest gadgets to date. And while it may be too soon to compare an almost 20 year old device to one just release a little over a year ago...well...I must say the Wii-mote is one tough bugger.
There are lots of pictures online with wiimotes sticking out of TVs, having penetrated a window or otherwise inducing carnage on ones home. In all cases the Wii-mote was fully intact despite just having bulleted its' way through solid glass or worse.
Personal experiences include:
1) Friend of mine bumped the thing with full force head first into the ceiling playing Bowling.
2) Another incident had a friend smashing a light bulb doing an overhead strike in Wii Tennis.
After both incidents (and I swear to god) I could not detect even the tiniest microscratch to the surface of the controller.
I have no idea what type of plastic the Wiimote is made of, but it will probably last ages.
GBs are pretty tough, yes. The most easily worn part in any system is the controller, and in my use, Nintendo's controllers have never broken. They're probably pretty close to the true king of Indestructible Gaming Widgetry, the TAC-2. =)
The one thing that I hated about them was the limited battery life, so I took a couple of jell cell batteries and a dead cell phone battery from the , ripped out the Ni-Cad cells and replaced them with a voltage controller then I ran a coiled cable from the jell cells to the battery pack, and ... Voila! One cell-phone battery from hell (as far as the phone company was concerned) .. and a good bit more sturdy than the car-adapter plugs that Motorola sold. .... From measuring the current, I figured that that pack gave me 3 days standby PLUS 8 hours of talk time (back when a normal 'extended' battery barely gave you 8 hours of standby with no talk time).
I put the whole kit and kaboodle in fluke meter pouch and I had a nice portable phone that lasted the weekend. (and doubled as a 5-pound flail in case I was ever attacked by some idiot).
So, what does this have to do with indestructible???.... well, I used a bike to go everywhere and... every once in a while, the cell phone would somehow work it's way out of the pouch while I was riding along at 30MPH, hit the pavement and bounce around at the end of the battery cord until I noticed the problem and hit the brakes.
I'm told (and do truly believe) that somebody once lost a bet that he could destroy one of those phones with his bare hands... I actually made a half-hearted attempt at destroying mine when I gave up on the analog line. I'm pretty sure that, if I really wanted to, I could have kept that thing going today.
Oh, and how I got the phone: it was the on-call support phone. A workmate had dropped the phone in the ocean (salt water --- nasty thing to do to most electronics) and, even though it kept working, my boss wasn't willing to risk it dying in the middle of a support call. My personal cell phone had just gotten stolen so when they replaced the work phone I got the sea-water soaked one, and used it for over 5 years.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Rugged portables from a couple of decades ago (or maybe a bit more than that).
Built to be dropped in the mud by soldiers, then driven over (by a tank if possible), then to have the mud washed (yes, washed) off afterwards - through all of which your data capture would probably still be running. Dust proof, waterproof, shockproof and practically bomb proof.
I had a gameboy as a kid many years ago. It dropped from our homes 5th floor balcony and didn't break!
:\
What destroyed it was when I went sailing with my parents boat few years ago and brought the gameboy with me so that my little sister could play with it during the rather long distance we sailed.
What happened was that she somehow lost it at the first day and when we came back 3 days later, we found the gameboy on the bottom of the sea at the begginning of the pier we set sail at!
I did let it dry for several days and tried to clean it up as much as I could, but all CPR failed and the patient was lost
Clearly the winner, i've had the megadrive and it's pads for neigh on decades now and they've taken some heavy abuse, back in my youth (because 27 is of course ancient :D) when id loose my temper with a game I was known to take it out on the pads, quite regularly launching them at the wall as hard as I could, my wall still bears the dents, the pads still work perfectly :)
:p
Then there was the once time I took to beating a bench vice with one, after a while I gave up, all it did was put little scratches in it
Lifesigns: Present Hair: Escaped Age: Increasing
30 years later and the HP C series of calculators are not only still running, but the 12C is still being made. (I wish the 15C was)
-GReg
The original Game Boy has problems with the battery compartment. The battery connectors (springs) wear and it doesn't hold the batteries in securely to the point where you have to be careful you don't move it while playing and even more careful when you put it down that it does not loose power. I had my first Game Boy replaced under warranty because of this. The same problem happened to the replacement after the warranty expired. Nintendo have since addressed this and have been using better battery connectors in their more recent products (GBA, Wii remote).
I had another problem my second GB. I'm not sure how common this is but after many years of use, on the left-hand side of the screen a whole vertical bar of pixels disappeared. This later increased to a bar three pixels wide.
From my experience, every Nintendo product made after the GB has been far more reliable.
Mine is broken but it always was. I found it lying on the road with its screen broken. Maybe it was ran over by a car but I doubt it because only the screen is broken. I don't think the plastic case would have resisted the pressure...
I have a 19" Viewsonic CRT that I purchased about 9 years ago. The damn thing is so heavy that I threw out my back trying to move it, but it still functions with no image loss. My brother, on the other hand, has had 7 monitors in the same amount of time, including one that spontaneously caught fire (that was awesome).
Toughest bit of electronica I ever had was my old Ironman wristwatch. After 12 or so years of constant use, I had to replace it only because the buttons had worn down and couldn't make a connection anymore.
The crowning compliment ever given this model was from a guy I knew who jousted on the ren faire circuit. He wore his under his gauntlet every day for well over 6 years: mud, horsecrap, and beatings from the other jousters never fazed the thing.
The mini is a bitch, and possibly the various Nanos aren't easy (really don't have an idea). But the full sized jobs have always been pretty easy change. Sonnet make third party ipod batteries which you can pick up cheaply - I'd think around 20 USD.
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They were the greatest just as long as you didn't Matrix with the stereo sound!!!
The toughest product ever made is homo sapiens. The lifespan of this product is approx. 65 years and the cheapest ones are made in China. Anyway, you can easily reproduce them in a special device called bed with no additional resources. What is more, sons of the bitches are not even close to extinction, no matter how many vulnerabilities they have. Has anyone tried to ask God for Service Pack 1? I would appreciate it very much. :))
I think you could use it as a hockey puck in the afternoon and do your taxes with it that evening.
"The world is like a circle with as many centers as there are men"
My gameboy had some pretty bad experiences (I remeber dropping it on concrete in Jr. High, and it still works around 20 years later.
However, I think the gameboy pales in comparison to the horror stories I've heard and experienced with the Nokia phones. One of my friends ran over his with his car and it still worked, and the screen didn't crack. I've shot mine across the room during a failed breakdancing experiment onto concrete / tile, only to be kicked by several other party goers. 5 years later and several drops it's still my go to phone when my trendy new phone breaks (which has happened at least 3 times).
Picked up a 4 pack of AA alkalines and fired up my original GameBoy. Yep, still works just fine. I have a GBC that is the main portable time waster. At some point, I'll eBay a GBA SP.
Other tough tech I own:
RCA 19" color television. Bought in the early 1980s, its only now needing a bit of alignment to sharpen up the focus.
Apple Extended Keyboard. 20 years old, works like it just came off the assembly line. Best. (Apple)Keyboard. EVER!
Real keyswitches. None of this conductive polymer dome contact crap. After using this keyboard, every other "modern" keyboard feels like I'm poking at a slab of Silly Putty.
HP-35/45. I own one of each. The 45 gets used multiple times daily. NICE tactile feedback keys. The calculator that will not die!
Western Electric telephones. I've 4 of them hooked up here. There's not a one of them that's less than 25 years old. The red 2500 by the computer has been retrofitted with a 16 button AUTOVON pad, WeCo "Beehive" ring indicator lamp, WeCo amplified handset, noise cancelling transmitter/mouthpiece, and matching red WeCo Touch-A-Matic autodialer and 4A SpeakerPhone.
See it here
I fully expect that the keyboard, HP calculators and Western Electric telephones will outlive me. I would not be surprised if the GameBoy outlives me as well. The TV will also likely last quite a few more years. Even though I have cable, I'll be getting the digital to analog converter box. Just in case I'll need it in future.
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Really? The first flat-screen iMac made this list? We have about 70 of them here at school and I think we've had to have the logic boards replaced in a half-dozen of them and hard drives in 3 or 4 of them.
Now I'll admit, out of 70 that isn't too bad, but I think it's enough to disqualify it from the list of toughest products ever made.
the nokia 3310 is a damn good phone when it comes to robustness.
I still use one.
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My Nokia 3210 still works fine. Could use a new battery (it's lost enough charge that it only has a couple of minutes of talk time) but it's still functioning, cracked screen and everything. Has since been decommissioned, but it served me well
The Ironman watches were hardly durable. Sure, the watch body would hold up-- but the pin that held the band on tended to fail miserably over time, almost always when you were swimming. I lost one swimming at the beach when I was a kid, and another failed during an actual triathlon swim for me. Isn't that the only thing it's supposed to do? Survive a triathlon?
The new velcro bands are more durable, but they also don't grip as well in the water. Still, the redesigned face is an improvement in my book.
My gameboy lasted for more than 7 yrs, even with the frequent mishandling (one eg-deliberately throwing it on the floor only gives it a few scratches and nothing more). It's definitely a 'rock'.