Does your camera lock up when drop kicked? (seriously)
Does your camera lock up when drop kicked? If these things are solid state to boot why do they freeze when dropped/drop kicked? My M200 seems more resistant than my later models... Please don't go drop kicking your cameras really really hard...just lightly...maybe don't do it at all, I may be crazy.

They may not turn off, but if you press keys too many times i got this: Strange preview offset and wrong colors. Maybe some glitches in contacts...

i got inverted colors alot on my m230. and yes, my camcorders freeze when they get drop kicked. Have you ever noticed that when the camcorder collides with something, the recorded audio gets all quiet? I think the crash is caused by the loud noise associated with the force of impact. Maybe the codec cannot keep up.

On my M230 (and sometimes on my M220, but not my M200) I have to wait for everything to "load" before I press another button or the whole camcorder crashes. If I hit delete I can't immediatly hit delete again...I have to wait for the preview to show up which is only a second...but a lifetime compared to my M200. As for drop kicking my cameras. The thing just freezes...video preview shows the last thing it saw before it chunked out...record light stays on and all. I've got to pluck the batteries and sometimes let it sit for a bit before using it again (really odd startup behavior).

I dunno if I'd be able to sit if I had shit...it'd be messy :oops:

My $.02 - possibly static discharge, millisecond battery disconnect, or depression at being so mistreated.

I would suspect a battery spring contact glitch. It's a well known problem with rocket altimeters. Too much acceleration in the wrong axis and the battery moves enough to disconnect.

...or depression at being so mistreated... I'll go for thisone ! :)

I saw something similar when I set the bitrate too high. I guessed that the codec couldn't keep up and the cam froze. I don't think I put it under enough stress to cause a battery glitch though.

Impact loading will cause the contacts and circuit board connectors to vibrate like a crystal. Hit a tuning fork and you may see how this works on the very tiny connectors. This may cause the microprocessor to go into an undetermined state. Soldering the batteries may help, but there's also the display connector. I work on forklifts that have vibrations on the controllers that are effectively hit like a jackhammer. The leads on parts often break of the circuit boards, fasteners routinely come undone, etc. This is why you often see a coating of clear waterproof epoxy painted on finished production boards. I've seen wires inside integrated chips come undone. It happens enough, I repair these every day out of a fleet of a few hundred vehicles. More than half of my cvs cams can take a hard hit and keep on recording. My $600 pocket digital camera cannot be dropped more than 2 feet on a hardwood floor. I've replaced it twice....

I had a bolt holding the record button down(unknowingly while using a waterproof case) and the offset of the Pure Digital screen was about .7in from either sides.