Steve W. wrote:
Atila Iskander wrote:

I once happened to witness to salesman from two US companies (T-x &
H-y) that made calculators, go after the same potential customer.
After both did their spiels about all the features of their
respective product, the H-y salesman took his calculator and threw it
as hard as he could at the ceiling a good 20+ feet up
Calculator went up, hit the ceiling, came back down, landed on a
bench, bounced off, and landed on a concrete floor
As the sales guy picked up his calculator, and started demonstrating
how it was still operational, he looked at his competitor and said:
"Our products are designed and built by engineers, for engineers
who work and rough environments.
We don't expect our equipment to be treated this way.
But at least, they have a good chance of surviving such abuse.."
He then turned to the other sales rep, and said:
"How about your calculator ?"
The other rep declined lobbing his calculator at the ceiling.
Guess who got the sale...




Sounds like the guys who sell Thermal Imagers in the fire service.
They will take a unit and bounce it off a concrete floor or throw it
around to demonstrate how much they can take. One rep had that fail at
our station though. He brought in the units and started his
demonstration. He would then pass the unit around to show how the
functions worked. When it came to the tossing part he did his thing
and handed me the camera. OOPS! the screen had a big blank spot where
part of the sensor or screen failed!!!


Reminds me of when I was doing some software development on the likes of
Symbol industrial PDAs. They had to pass IIRC a test involving multiple
drops from at least 1 meter onto concrete. While indirectly working for
IBM it was mentioned what hadn't been factored in was the courier driver
3m horizontal toss into the back of the van which managed to break many
things regardless of the ruggedisation.