When I got back from camping a few weeks ago I dumped all my clothes in the laundry. When the load finished I realized my I'd accidentally thrown in my iPod Nano! I thought for sure it was broken, so just set it under my bed for the past few weeks. Yesterday I plugged it into my mac, and to my surprise it booted! These things are indestructible. Apparently the Sure Ec3 earphones are waterproof as well (at least after they dry out). Now my iPod is fresh and clean.

Wow, it's hard to believe how much abuse iPods can take sometimes.
My friend jumped into a pool with her iPod Nano, and somehow it survived. It runs out of battery in under an hour, though.
My iPod has taken some abuse as well, like being dropped down about a story high, and somehow surviving; my carrying case must be good...

hahaha i ran over mine.... in a HUMMER!!!!! lol and its been washed like 5 times!!!! lol really i even throw it ALOT!!! its an ipod mini they dont makes those anymore something about lead paint or sumthin i really dont see the problem!!!

I've gone through 6 that all broke (not by accidental damage but by defects, I got them all replaced for free).

I must just have awful luck.

lol that sux!!!!        

BTW an explanation:

Water doesn't damage anything. It just shorts it out. So eventually it evaporates, removing the shortage.

True, it can permanently damage your piece of electronics if the shortage burns out the wires, but otherwise it'll all disapear (or should, at least)

Dropping it, not so much. Stuff breaks:(

i had a few of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gen ipods break too, Zach-- I dealt with apple's phone support several times, and it didn't make me happy.  In the end, they sent me a (what was at the time) new iPod Color, and since the 4th gen days, the ipods seem to much more reliable.  In the old ones, the clickwheels would break all the time, leaving only the select button and hold switch in working order... :P 

my battery is dying too, now-- I run a from-scratch OS on it though, called Rockbox, which eats more battery than the apple OS (hooray for rockbox!! it lets my Color play mpg files and more media types than any ghetto Apple OS would ever let me do.  yes, i'm advertising-- it's worth checking it out if you know anything about how operating systems work).  The battery life has a lot to do with the way you let the battery run out, or if you leave the darned thing plugged in for days on end.

I agree with Zach... Dropping does break stuff :P  I would see if I could avoid dropping ipods out of buildings... 

A lot of those small electronics are perfectly fine after being in water, as long as you don't turn them on before they are completely 100% dry.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible the quality of electronic devices recently.

Although, it's too bad they don't make a waterproof iPod for surfing, or kayaking, ect.

I believe you can get a water-proof CASE, though.

Not sure how you would work the controls though. Ebay it