When you say 'fried' do you mean that your information is erased? Or are you saying that it doesn't work?

We have one co-worker that has a Dell notebook with a bad USB port. Whenever he would connect a mouse it would never light up. When he connected his iPod and phone his information was deleted. (both iPod and phone still worked - just his songs and contacts were missing)

After our IT dept looked at it they sent it into Dell to be fixed. Apparently the voltage was higher than normal in that particular port. (other USB ports on the notebook were fine)

So long story short - sometimes it's actually not the phone's fault (or driver's for that matter). :p