Your phone fell in the toilet. In the pool. Your iPod got run over by a car. You dropped your laptop hustling to make an airline connection. We all have horror stories about the gadgets that we've loved and lost, whether it was our fault or someone else's.
I have dropped my Sony point-and-shoot camera face down on concrete outside when doing a hand-off, had an entire bottle of water flood a handbag that was home to my iPod, and dropped my first iPhone face down on a sidewalk on — get this — a very steep San Francisco hill. The iPhone kept ticking, but the previous two gadgets were not so lucky.
As much as I try to be so careful with my valuable (technically and sentimentally) electronics, there will always be accidents. Sometimes they won't break; other times, they're gone forever before you can even attempt a clever rice trick.
Anyway, I know I'm not the only klutz or unlucky person here — hook me up with your story of the worst way you've ever lost or broken a gadget.
APC
Vero Moda
2two
I lost my Nokia 6131 to the toilet, fell out of my pocket. Was forced to use an inferior phone for about 10 days before I upgraded to my BlackBerry. Just in time!
1At my cousin's wedding, my friend dropped my canon SD600 during a big family photo. the shutter got stuck and did not work. I had to buy a camera for the wedding party that was the next day and send my camera to the canon warranty to replace. Luckily I got it back before I went to Chicago
2Mine's not your typical messed up gadget story. I would rather know exactly why my stuff stopped working than just have it die on me. I took my laptop on a trip with me even though I knew I wasn't going to need it, but didn't want to leave it in my hot car the entire time I was gone. Well, it would have been better off in the car since my laptop decided to just crash and the hard drive stopped working with a simple hand off on the bed. I still don't get why my laptop stopped working and it ticks me off to this day. I didn't have any of my pictures or college papers backed up on an external hard drive
3I've never lost any gadget, never lost a phone either, nothing. Even on a night out with a few (ok, many..) drinks..
4I not only dropped my phone in the toilet, I flushed it down. I wasn't even intoxicated. That was the last time I let myself buy something fancy.
5i was at the calgary stampede last year and i dropped my phone in my cup of beer.... to this day, my heart still drops when i see someone use a white sony ericcson w580i =(
6When I was 17, i got drunk in a city park with a hot guy, made out with him for hours on a bench - meanwhile my purse was stolen with my brand new 600$ sony walkman in it.
I can't believe walkmen used to be so expensive! LOL.
7My cell was in the back pocket of my jeans. The phone feel out when I was crossing the street and onto a insane intersection where it was run over by the traffic. I never saw it again, as the street was way to dangerous to attempt to look for it.
8i was drunk on campus and fell down on, then spilled my entire beer on, my digital camera.. the damage was nothing when compared to my torn up leg, but it never worked again
9Got really wasted and don't remember doing it but apparently some time during the night I left a lit cigarette sitting on my iPod so that it melted then tried to douse it out with beer. In the same night I also melted several keys together on my wireless keyboard and spilled beer on my PSP3 controller.
10None of em work anymore
Expensive night.
Back in the era of CD players and CDs, before a HS band competition we were all waiting for buses...I left my bag in the parking lot and a bus came barreling through the lot not only to run over my bag (containing lunch, clothes, etc.) but to smash my CD player to bits and crack lots of my CDs in half.
11So there you have it, a bus ran over my music.
I put my LG chocolate in the washer for a full cycle....it actually worked afterward too!
12Oh my. Where to begin!
a) I left my gorgeous Sony Ericsson on the plane to a different country.
b) Within a week of having my new HP laptop, I took a mean tumble down some stairs and it killed the screen. But I had it hooked up to an external monitor. Then my house was broken into. And they took the laptop. Not the projector. Not the two dvd players. Not my speaker set. Not my external hard drive (Thank God). Just my busted up, screen-less laptop.
3. My tablet pc's motherboard MELTED from overuse and over-heating.
4. My cousin thought it would be fun to take my digital camera out while she was doing an intense dance fitness class and crashed it on the floor.
5. Was a bit drunk after a night with the girls recovering from a bad break-up and THREW MY PHONE into oncoming traffic when I saw my ex trying to call. It was broken into many pieces... and still rang. It must have been Satan's phone.
Non-gadget related: I've accidentally baked my wallet in the over. Who knew credit cards were like Shrinky-Dinks?
13PS.. Just realized I went a)... b)... 3... If that doesn't prove how ADHD I am, I don't know what does.
14I put a laptop on the roof of the car in a hotel parking lot while I loaded up some luggage and then drove off with it still there. I called the hotel as soon as I realized it, several hours later, but no one had turned it in. I suppose it could have gone flying off the roof on the highway too. The funny thing is that I did the same thing with my GameBoy in St. Louis about 10 yrs earlier.
I also lost a cell phone to the toilet, but, who hasn't?
15i was working on a cruise ship and one night during rough seas my ipod i spent a whole year perfecting, putting pictures and filling in every single bit of info on 7000 songs fell of the desk, onto the floor and smashed the display. i seriously burst into tears. so much work gone in a spilt second!
16I don't think I've ever lost or broken one of my gadgets, but I'm getting an iPhone and I'm already terrified something's gonna happen to it.
17my dog broke my ipod..does that beat it??
18i was 12 and decided to get a cool pink furry monster case for it, i left it on my desk with the chair out, go out for an hour and then come back to find the ipod in its case on the floor with a massive crack in the screen and the dog nearby looking really sorry.
he decided it was a toy...let's say it took me awhile to forgive him (2 days) and a yeaar for me to beg for a new ipod
Actually the worst one that ive witnessed would be what happened to my friends mp3 player. She was messing with it holding it over the table where we were eating lunch, and she dropped it straight into her cup of tea. That was the end of that mp3 player.
19Less than a week after I bought my Kindle, a whole vase of water and flowers fell over on top of it. I didn't discover this until around an hour later when the water had really seeped into the screen and puddled out the bottom.
20My Olympus camera. I had had it for almost 3 years and I knew it inside and out. I was on vacation in December and while enjoying some adult beverages, I started to play with the strap on the camera and swinging it back and forth. Well, needless to say it flew out of hand into the wall and then hit the floor. Yeah, the lens cracked and I was without a camera for the rest of my vacation.
21See the weird thing is that EVERY single electronic I had seemed to be Me-Proof. I have a problem with klutziness. It's a wonder I've only broken 2 bones (both wrists at the same time). Well, nothing happened with my first cell. My second one, I hated. I WANTED it to break. I was going crazy. I spilled nearly an entire cup of water on it and it still worked. Threw it HARD against my wall and it just go scratched. The thing hated me. My new cell, I hate, not as much, but still hate. I've sat on it, like it was in my back pocket. It's like the flimsiest thing in the world. Nothing happens to cell phones of mine. My 360 loves me
I
did have to get it fixed for RROD but otherwise it always adores me. My laptop can't get enough of me. Pretty much I have a love/hate relationship with electronics but they just won't die. No
matter what. Darn it.
22I accidentally left my nokia on the bathroom counter one day while getting ready. I forgot where I had set it down and began looking all around the house for it. Finally i remembered the bathroom. I had apparently missed a call and my poor phone had vibrated itself off the bathroom counter and into the toilet. Techno suicide!
23i lost my ipod mini when i was running on the treadmill and my arm got caught in the headphone cord and jerked the ipod from the machine and it flew passed my head and smashed against the back wall. it was so loud and after that it never really worked. i had to replace it after a week.
24I went for a run in my boyfriend's neighborhood and brought my phone in case I got lost. Being the smart girl that I am I placed it in my sports bra. Who knew boob sweat could cause water damage. When I went to the store to replace it, I didn't want to say what happened. Turns out I couldn't get a new one that day, but all of a sudden the screen started working again. The vibration setting doesn't work though.
25lol @ drlingnikki. oh no!
26i dropped my camera while studying abroad, and had to tie rubber bands around it the whole trip to keep it from falling apart!
27Well, I had spent $320 on an unlocked 16GB iPhone 3G running on 3.0 and it broke that night. I had been waiting for 2 years for apple to put copy&paste on the iPhone. I had been drooling over the iPhone since 2007. So the night I got one, I put my SIM card in and everything worked perfect! I was so excited!!! Then I took it out to import all my contacts from my old phone onto the SIM. When I took it out, a little piece of something popped out. WHAT?!!! I put the SIM back in and my screen won't respond. UGHHHH. Two years of waiting for 3 hours of use. FML. FML. FML.
28I think any geek has had their fair share of accidents, but my biggest tech regret was wearing sweat pants to go and get my tire changed. Why? Because as I hopped into my swingin' 1996 Saturn, my cell phone promptly fell out out of my pocket and onto the ground behind my tire. Next thing I knew, I was searching for Motorola coupons to fix my flattened phone.
Needless to say, I found out the hard way that running over cell phones is an awful way to increase their longevity.
29i was at work (check out the username) and ran to the restroom. my ($600 first gen) iphone slipped out of my back pocket into the toilet. we have some awesome tools at work so i think i was able to save it. the phone spent 2 days sitting on the graphics card of a mac pro hoping to save it. on the third day, it worked. fellow geniuses call it "toilet streaks" because the display was a little streakie at first but it all went away. i had NO issues with the phone, but i got a new one anyway.
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