Some stress tests fall way outside the realm of predictable scenarios, and those are our favorites. At Gadgetoff 2009, Lenovo let some guys launch two ThinkPads from a trebuchet, just because. They get destroyed, but fare better than expected.

The team recovered the hard drives from their battered casings, and unfortunately they didn't boot when inserted into another, less smashed ThnkPad. The data was able to be recovered, and once it was it booted up the laptop fine.

Update: Jeffery let me know that the smashed laptops themselves didn't boot, but as soon as the drives were removed and inserted into another system, they booted up fine. No fancy data recovery required. Not too bad considering they fell hundreds of feet to the ground. [Thanks, Jeffery!]

Send an email to Chris Jacob, the author of this post, at cjacob@gizmodo.com.