Tech Blog

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Yes, I still have my increasingly bedraggled looking Blackberry Curve. Yes, I still want an iPhone 4. I know lots of you have them now, especially if the lines around stores is any indication at all. Okay not to mention several cell providers saying that they are so way sold out that it's almost best just not to ask. Sure fine. In the meantime, I caught this pretty handy post on TUAW about what to check for on your new iPhone 4 (if you are so lucky as to be able to get one): TUAW Tips: 25 ways to check the hardware on your iPhone 4 . Let's take this advice a step further and talk about checking all new gadgets you buy.

Several times a month a new gadget finds its way to my house. Lately, it's been kitchen and cooking related gadgets, but they count for me (since I do most of the cooking). After we get a new gadget home we don't trash the box and packing materials right away, we try and use and check the device first. The one time we didn't do this…yeah, it was faulty and we had to return is sans box (which I know stores aren't fond of either). The advice from the TUAW post is really good (think big picture here):

• Do all the features work as advertised.
• Are all the buttons working and feel solid
• Is the case dent, scratch, gap free?

Then if you do find a problem the next question is: is it worth it to return it. For me a lot of cosmetic things (a small scratch or blemish) I'm not so concerned. Pretty much everything else…pack it up and get a new one.Yes, it's might be a royal pain, and it does the deflate the "new gadget feeling", but really small flaws like a button that doesn't seem quite right might be fine now, but in six months? Will that button fail? Will it fail after a point when taking it back to the store might become a real hassle? What's worth it then?

Fix it yourself? Yeah, not really anymore folks. I have a dead portable hard drive because I tried to do some home repair on it. Truthfully I fried it with a bad cable (something I should have returned right away, but thought it was me, not the cable). The era of fix it yourself is almost past. Yes, you can still put in your own RAM and hard drives and I've heard of people replacing their own iPhone batteries, but I think in truth the time of being able to fix the toaster or coffee pot are way, way over.

So the next new gadget that you welcome into your home, give it a good inspection and if it doesn't pass muster. Pat it gently and bring it back.