Your iPod will last four years

That's the verdict from Apple -- iPods are designed to last four years before giving up the ghost, one way or another. And according to this same Apple Insider article, the failure rate for new iPods is 5 percent. At least the Apple Store is there for you.

And the move from little, itty bitty disc drives to flash memory is a positive step:

Apple's fairly recent decision to embrace solid-state NAND flash memory at the core of its most popular iPod models, rather than hard disk drives, is likely to improve failure rates. Flash memory lacks the moveable parts contained inside hard disks, making the storage medium significantly more durable.

But what if you're a geek with lots of time -- and iPod nanos-- on your hands? You want to drive a car over one, as the Ars Technica reviewers did:

We placed the nano in the path of the car and drove over it with both front and rear tires. Driving over the nano produced sickening crunching noises which coincidentally sounded a lot like an LCD being crushed. After the first hit and run, the iPod's display was not cracked but was showing some nasty vertical lines. Shockingly, the nano was still playing music and the controls still operated as expected, as we were still able to skip ahead, go back, pause, and play music!

To kill the nano, they had to drop it from a height of 40 feet:

Alas, the iPod nano finally gave up the ghost. In addition to the display showing nothing and the backlight being perpetually stuck on, the music finally subsided. The nano had journeyed to the Land Where Consumer Electronics Are Eternally Blessed.

And the Ars Technica people did the same thing to a next-generation iPod nano (the kind that comes in colors). They think it will withstand a trip through the washing machine, if not the dryer. But only if you don't drop and crack it first:

Despite many requests to drop the nano into the toilet, boiling water, and cups of beer, I decided to quit with the washing machine. Since the nano had already survived the washer, I deemed it unnecessary to perform similar liquid-related tests that would probably ultimately give the nano at least an equal chance of survival (one would hope that after dropping a nano into a cup of beer, it would be rinsed off before drying out).

So here's the deal. You can sit on your iPod. You probably can drive your car over it. You might even be able to machine wash it. But don't drop it out of a three-story building. Class dismissed.