I really haven't seen aoyne "brick" their devices (in a long time).
I'm not saying it can't happen, but I think the normal flashing
mechanism is pretty safe.
Whenever I had a dead device -- it was always because the battery
was completely drained... so, like one time, I replaced the drained
battery with one that was charged and the device was still dead!
Ah, but the battery I *thought* was charged, was really also drained.
Now I know to plug in, let a battery charge for 10 minutes, then
give it a try. I've also forgotten to put the battery switch back to
lock... easy enough if you go through the steps, and notice that
you can't unlock, because it's already unlocked -- and finally,
you CAN put the batter in upside down...
I think my pda finally died, somehow -- it was up for close to
30 days... I came in and found it off, and when I pressed a
key to wake up, I had a battery notice... strange, since it
was plugged in.
Scott