Wow. T-Mobile and Danger, the Microsoft-owned subsidiary that makes the Sidekick, has just announced that they’ve likely lost all user data that was being stored on Microsoft’s servers due to a server failure. That means that any contacts, photos, calendars, or to-do lists that haven’t been locally backed up are gone. Apparently if you don’t turn off your Sidekick and make sure its battery doesn’t run out you can salvage what’s currently stored on the device, otherwise you’re out of luck: Microsoft/Danger is describing the likelihood of recovering the data from their servers as “extremely low”.
T-Mobile Sidekick users have been suffering from a major outage all week, and that issue apparently hasn’t been resolved either.
This goes beyond FAIL, face-palm, or any of the other internet memes we’ve come to associate with incompetence. The fact that T-Mobile and/or Microsoft Danger don’t have a redundant backup is simply inexcusable, especially given the fact that the Sidekick is totally reliant on the cloud because it doesn’t store its data locally. Microsoft acquired Danger for $500 million in February 2008.
Update:: There is some speculation that this was not actually caused by a server meltdown, but by Danger’s failure to make a backup before a Storage Area Network upgrade that was botched.
The full letter to customers is below.
T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION
Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:
T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption. We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.
Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips at the T-Mobile Sidekick Forums (http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick ). We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.
In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.
We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.
We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.
Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.
Via Engadget
And they don’t backup why? They’re Microsoft….
I think Danger is the one to be blamed. Unbelievable … How can anyone in tech not think about backing up?!
Even Microsoft knows that.
Microsoft owns Danger. Most of the old Danger people quit or got fired. So its Microsoft.
Read this.
http://www.hipt...e-sidekick-fail
i bet danger thought they had a backup plan. just they never tested it. how often do you check your back-ups to make sure they’re actually up to date and restoreable? I’m not excusing them, only saying i doubt “backup strategy: none” was not in their business plan.
also worth noting that when you lose most cell phones you lose all pictures, texts, contacts, data, since most of them dont have any kind of sync. smartphones are a different breed for sure but are just a small percentage of multimedia phones. even the iphone, if you have not synced in a while (which is reasonably likely since the only at-hand reason to do so is to get new music on it) is susceptible to major data loss if you lose the phone.
this is worse since its like every sidekick user losing their phone at one time, for reasons beyond their own control. embarassing for ms and danger.
Honestly, as a computer professional, if you don’t test your backups, you _don’t_ have a backup.
You’d think Microsoft would know better.
Carl
You know what’s worse is that for every sidekick customer they pay 20.00 aditional to their bill monthly for this not to happen, there is no excuse…
Babygirl,
M.city
If you were a small business then I’d agree with you that you might not check your backups were working correctly.
However if you are a company as big as Microsoft you should be regularly checking that your backups do work correctly.
Bad for microsoft, good for Google and Android. With the automatic sync options and the redundant information backup inherent in the Android platform, its looking better and better. My contacts are on Sim card, Phone memory, Gmail, and Google Voice. I am very very not worried about losing my data.
I think its a scam, I bet it is because they let go of some employees from the merging with microsoft & they got even!
They probably backed up to a proprietary file format (the kind Microsoft is so fond of) and when it came time to restore, the backup wasn’t readable. Maybe the DLLs were incompatible. Or a hacker got in and deleted all their backups.
Whatever it is, it’s something really appallingly stupid. It’s not a case of “your data was recovered from last week/month” but “we either don’t have ANY backups or ALL our backups are unrecoverable”.
I would like to start by saying that from what I have heard some of Sidekick users will get data back no guarantees. Microsoft should have been backing up info on their end, not only on tmobile’s part. I am also positive that T- Mobile is taking the fault here. They are giving credits for the issue as well as taking all the blame. Those reps in t mobile stores and call centers have to take the customers or talk to them and say “hey we are sorry this happened we want to do the best we can,” while Microsoft sits and watches t mobile…..I mean what has been said as far as what microsoft is doing????? Looks like nothing
What a great analysis of the situation. Troll.
Lawyers (ie; ambulance chasers) are likely contacting Sidekick owners at this moment.
Expect a civil suit LOL. Thats terrible MSFT
What’s the bet that in the terms of service they state no responibility for loss of your data.
No backup plan is fool proof, especially with massive amounts of data and a small budget. But if is surprising they don’t have at least an older backup they can restore from.
they call it microsoft Danger for a reason
+1
Somehow that already didn’t seem a good name when I first read over it.
Still I hope they will also release a technical explanation how they destroyed/lost/damaged all backups.
Oh my that’s funny.
I wonder if the servers were running Windows Vista and there were no working drivers for the backup system.
That’s funny +1
Microsoft’s so big. I wonder how this will affect the company as a whole
http://www.trad...spx?symbol=msft
“Letting Microsoft acquire a company called Danger is like buying a pit bull named “Killer” and letting him sleep in the henhouse.”
http://www.info...logs_2009-10-12
T-Mobile and Sidekick are garbage — buy an iPhone or G1
Why do people buy crap phones?
The phones are amazing. Its Microsoft thats not.
I used to have one a long time ago, the keyboards really are great.
My iPhone does not work all that great. I bought into all the hype and glory about this smart phone that I am now regretting it…still have one more year contract to go with AT&T.
I agree.. I HATE my iPhone. I went back to my motoMing and will just wait for the contract to end.
I want to correct you on something Travis. If I didnt mis read what you just said you said T-Mobile and sidekicks are garbage and you suggusted a G1 T-Mobile is the only company with the G1 so apparently they arnt doing anything wrong.
You see in the mobile industry the company only has the rights to sell a product they dont own it. JUST like AT&T was exclusive with Apple and the iPhone sidekick is exclusive with T-Mobile therefore its the companies obligation to deliever.
The company delievers the actual service unless it goes through a media like danger did with micosoft or iphone with apple and G1 android with google. Say google crashed tomarrow or even itunes for that fact. You would then be complaining your same argument. YOU FAIL.
before you trash someone else, learn how to spell and a little grammar.
It is ironic that someone who has yet to discover their shift key or decipher the correct order of subordinate clauses should be casting aspersions on someone else’s grammar.
His point was evidently lost on you. His point was that if these people had true smartphones (iPhone, G1), they wouldn’t care about this cloud disaster, because those phones store and sync locally. His comment had nothing to do with T-mobile has a provider.
Sidekicks are terrible solely on call quality. Seriously, it is a phone and yet impossible to hear….anything!
A G1? What is this, 2008?
because people make their own decision! you dumb!
I agree with the Sidekick being garbage….but I think that the I phone is just a POS too. I mean I know several people who have that phone and their camera sucks they get continued dropped calls, applications are not free and suck. Thats just from what I have seen and heard. The G1 great phone I like that phone alot.
Cheaper data plan
deaf people (advantages over other phones)
people they dont like touchscreens
dont want at&t (iphone)
better keyboards (depending on sidekick model)
was waiting to read the line… “but we will be crediting your account worth 2 months of service”.
Nope, you do get one month though… one month of data, that is.
So, a credit of roughly $20 (if you’re grandfathered) to $35 max. For seven years’ worth of data lost in the case of customers who have been with the SK since the beginning.
Yeah… to say “that doesn’t cut it” doesn’t even begin to cover how insufficient it is…
Wow, that is astoundingly bad. This is not even an innocent mistake. To not run backups is negligent.
All those MS Office Live users better be backing up their documents ASAP.
*reads article*
…
Shit, I better back up all my contacts on Gmail. That shit is synced straight to my iPhone. If Gmail goes down, there goes all my contacts.
And for once, Im glad I switched from T-Mobile/Sidekick to AT&T/iPhone.
Well, it’s a different situation. The iPhone and Android contacts, yes, but they also keep a local copy that you could use if google/me.com blows up. So if it’s down there’d be no sync’ing but your phone would still work.
Only Microsoft was crazy enough to make a phone and blow away any local storage on reboot. That’s just nuts. Now they have to tell people not to turn off their phones… Crazy, crazy, crazy.
I love the amount of shit being heaped on Microsoft here.
The negligence on their part here is making an aquisition like Danger and making sure that they adhere to their corporate specs.
Seriously, has anyone EVER lost any hotmail, mesh, live sync etc etc content from their account aside from letting it lapse or losing their credentials through phishing?
They run stuff 100x more complicated than the Sidekick stuff and pull it off with apparent ease. They have this stuff down to a science.
This massive f-up looked to me like a completely mis-managed aquisition that lacked any type of corporate oversight.
yeah this is total BS good bye sidekick hello mytouch 3G
I wonder what you did to all the data when you switched… didn’t you leave all that behind anyway?
No backup and running MS software? That’s beyond brave, that’s just idiotically crazy!
I do double backups even for my private stuff. One local copy and one offsite backup. And MS doesn’t have anything?
Unbelievable!
*goes to check the calendar, no, definitely not April*
Well working with Danger…. they have been warned…
lol the name is just as bad as naming the company they might as well have named the company
our shit dont work
acme
dont buy this
utoh
red flag
I don’t understand why everyone is blaming T-Mobile for this. Yeah, it sucks beyond belief, but from everything I’ve read, it sounds like an entirely Microsoft/Danger problem. I mean, shame on MS for not having a backup and screwing up so astoundingly badly, but don’t blame T-Mobile.
would you trust this company for your cloud computing need
Woops, there goes that whole Azure thing.
Amazon forever!
Unbelievable, inexcusable. I hope MS loses $$$ on this one.
Begs the question, should we really trust our content online or should providers like MS actually just back the stuff up?
Maybe they should backup using SkyDrive…
or a time capsule?
lmao, probably more to it though.
Call this a get-out-of-contract-free card and upgrade.
they aren’t letting anyone out of contract unless you pay the $200 termination fee. they are holding customers hostage
True,the only ones paying for this is sidekick users.I just spoke with GhettoFabulous, obviously her first day as a tMobile customer service rep. She quite loudly reassured me I will pay the $200 if I back out of my contract 3 months shy.
This is why you get your own. It’s cheap enough today and VoIP should allow users to connect to their own server and backup their info. Too big, too important and too cumbersome. And I agree that’s why they call it Danger.
And what phones use Voip and allow you to connect to a server of your choice to back up everything ?
My Samsung i760 on the Verizon network. I use Skype for international calls, and back up data to my laptop (automatically via ActiveSync) and/or my web server (via FTP when I choose to do so, when I have important files and will be away from my laptop for more than a few hours).
…and that’s why I’m with Verizon.
First ?
Stunned
Well, it’ll be hard for MS to convince people to trust their cloud services now, and some people cry when they don’t have gmail for 30 mins, feel sorry about Sidekick users, time to get an Android phone huh?
what else do you expect from microsoft…
Wow. I used to have a Sidekick. And Microsoft expects Windows Mobile 6.5 users to use their My Phone service? Yikes.
Good thing I came across this because my son has been wanting a sidekick for the longest time. I now know what my answer will be to him.
WOW, This is totally unacceptable. I pay a grip every month to maintain my services and this is the outcome? Time to say goodbye,sorry t-mobile
Well, it sounds like it’s not t-mobile’s fault, I wouldn’t blame them for Microsoft/Danger’s failings.
t-mobile is a complete joke at this point. i am one of the people dealing with this and its ridiculous! every time i try to put my contacts back in the phone it deletes them again!!! customer service is a joke cause none of them even know whats going on! im locked into a contract with them sadly so im screwed right now
See, I really don’t understand this, but then I’m not a Sidekick customer. I’ve never had a problem with T-Mobile, and compared to the other mobile service providers in the UK they are astonishingly helpful. This is Microsoft’s balls-up, so it should be them that’s taking the brunt of the stick, not T-Mobile. I hope they get sued good and proper.
It’s unfortunate when something like this happens when it’s based on a totally awesome concept (eg clouds) because it turns people off from the idea because of one company’s relative incompetence. Both Microsoft’s and Tmo’s past fails have had nothing to do with cloud computing – consider the common denominator (the companies themselves).
That’s a valid point, but let’s be fair–nearly every major cloud provider has had some sort of failure in the past 24 months. Most haven’t resulted in outright dataloss, but Amazon, Rackspace Cloud, and Google have all had outages.
Cloud computing *is* the common denominator–it’s not fully baked yet. This is hard to get right and there are lots of little ways things can go wrong. They’re moving very, very close to being completely reliable, and doing so quite quickly, but they’re not there yet, so while this isn’t exactly a surprise, it just shows that you need to be prepared for something like this when you trust entirely in the cloud.
You are being extremely generous to Danger.
you can’t compare a short term service outage to loosing your customers data for ever, its a much greater order magnitude of FAIL.
“They’re moving very, very close to being completely reliable”
Please, reliability 101, nothing is ever “completely reliable”, particularly not software which is too complex to ever be tested properly. It does not matter how many ‘nines’ you think you have bought of reliability all you are doing is postponing the inevitable failure event(s). The great thing about cloud is that the software is so complex and the system so large it can never be usefully tested so you have no idea what the achieved relability will be. No amount of component testing or analysis is going to yield useful information on the type of cascade failure that takes out these services.
Need at least 10 grand a user for compensation.
Microsoft and Tmobile needs to pay
epic fail
why even take the effort of typing “epic fail”?
Why even take the effort of typing “why even take the effort of typing “epic fail”"?
f(f(epic fail)
Close your parentheses, sir
Microsoft, stick to the OS.
Google, stick to the cloud.
I smell lawsuits. Successful ones? Hard to tell, but you’ve got a lot of pissed off people wanting to blame someone.
It’s not like this was just an accident with poor luck and no one at fault. It’s a clear case of negligence on the part of Microsoft.
It’s a rookie failure. Why aren’t there backups?
*puts on his Pointy-Haired Boss hat* We’re in a recession, doanchano. *nods* We can’t be having with these expensive machines lying around doing nothing, can we!
to adapt a bill gates coment about ppl not buying software for bug fixes (they buy them for features). people don’t buy services for backups….
No backup….wowzers
Unbelievable… thanks for the info, just retweeted!
Best
Stotti
Wow! What a surprise! A Micro$oft server crashing! And, better yet, no backup!
That’s it!
I’ve had enough…
I’m upgrading to windows 7 today.
a prime example of why to never trust *any* company as the sole source/backup of your data. EVER
My point exactly.
This is why you do a physical backup (that you store somewhere other than right next to the computer you’re backing up) as well as a cloud-based online service like Mozy.
I’m just trying to think of this from the consumer side… What would the appropriate compensation be? I’m putting it at $600/sidekick user, so they can buy whatever replacement phone they want… Paid by MS, since it’s not a T-Mobile issue… Though T-Mobile would also suffer a bit if this caused significant numbers of Sidekickers to leave. Maybe $1K/user – $600 for the consumer, $400 back to T-Mobile to cover ETF-less terminations for whoever leaves and ongoing lost monthly fees. No idea how many Sidekicks are in use, though… Is this even a big deal?
I think each Sidekick user should get a free “I’m a PC” T-Shirt.
And why does this article refer to the server farm as “the cloud”? It’s a server farm, on a network–not a mystical semi-organic processing nebula. Among the ways to sound retarded these days using the terms “fail”, “epic fail”, “meme”, “grok” or “the cloud” are high on the list.
I agree! I tried getting another phone and they wouldnt even give me the discount because I bought my side kick a year ago…
you diddnt bitch nearly enough. call back.
Yes. The Sidekick is one of Tmo’s most popular data phone, especially to the young, pay-as-you-go market. There are a LOT of us and the really stupid thing is, one of Tmo’s troubleshooting steps is “Power down your device and remove the battery.” They told ME to do this before they knew it was a nationwide outage… granted, I can’t blame them for not knowing, but if I had done that, I’d have lost everything.
Never sign up with Verizon and Microsoft Mobile based phones. We lost everything.
Check out your phone logo and make sure it is NOT Microsoft.
But but but, what about Pink coming in March 2010?
Would you please purchase that instead?
It is Vzw and touch screen!
I am one such customer and tmobile’s offer of one month free for loosing 6000 of my stored emails, some with precious family pictures, lost software registration information, hundreds of lost contacts with no way to replace them or get them back as anyone with a brain always knows the three B’s of IT: backup backup backup. Obviously tmobile, with such lousy slow service to begin with, has been getting by with a single data server for sidekicks and that’s partially why they limit email to 6 megabytes. This is inexcusable and their customers should all defect to Sprint, Verizon or ATT and file class action lawsuits for lost registration info, etc. Also lost is registration information to hundreds of websites and password or logon ID’s. What a crock is the internet when you have companies charging such high prices for service and they can’t even buy a lousy program like Acronis True Image and run it daily. No excuse.
I’m not a Sidekick owner and don’t know: is it not possible to backup personal data by the user? Or why haven’t you backed it up by yourself?
It is extremely difficult to back up the personal data on a Sidekick.
A year ago I wanted to get a dump of my phone numbers. I had to log into the T-Mobile site, go to the Sidekick Desktop, and copy-and-paste it to a spreadsheet. There is no native export in the T-Mobile desktop online.
There is a backup program, but it requires you to purchase a $30 piece of software for Windows, and a $20 proprietary data cable. There is no Mac equivalent, leaving a number of people out in the cold.
I went through three iterations of the Sidekick – the Sidekick Color, the Sidekick 2, and most recently the Sidekick 3 – and only left T-Mobile and the Sidekick when the iPhone 3Gs came out, giving enough options for me to finally consider it worth changing.
Google will boast from this inciddent as Google is promoting data portability with which you may backup easily.
Lol extremely difficult?
First off, unless you’re Paris Hilton and 6000 is the number of sexual partners you’ve had, who REALLY has that many contacts? Are these all your Myspace pals? Whoa, that ther’s important stuff.
Second of all, it’s funny that everyone blames Micro$oft for not backing up stuff when they themselves didn’t make backup files for their own info. Silly. I hate Apple and Microsoft as much as the next person, I personally think they’re both crap, but seriously, there are several ways you could’ve helped yourself. And the next thing you can do is not get a KID’S PHONE, may I suggest an Android device? Oh yeah, and you can blame Google when that goes down too. Or write your contact lisit on paper and laminate it, heh. Psh, typical lazy American. Things break. Nothing is permanent. Stuff gets lost. Not every storage method is epicfail!-proof, so you have to back things up.
What’s that? Oh, your poor hands can’t type after your diatribe? So sorry… I know some 8 year olds that type 60 WAM, need some help?
Tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of sidekicks still in use. We should sue their ass off and I and my kids (2) who use them plan to defect no matter how expensive it will be and plan to bad mouth this company to death no matter what it cost me too because there is no excuse for not testing a backup before doing an upgrade. I always backup with True Image prior to installing ANY software so I can restore my boot partition (data always kept separate in QUADRUPLICATE). What kind of morons are running their IT deparment?
Probably the scarecrow from wizard of OZ is running tmobile and that’s before he met the WIZARD and gave him a brain!
I sure hope so poor victim at tmobile is an attorney and contacts all sidekick users via forums etc and gathers steam for a class action lawsuit. I see nothing different from this than suing a car manufacturer for defects which result in human harm. This is harmful believe me!!
That gives me a really warm and fuzzy feeling running my stuff in Microsoft’s cloud… and really wondering how diligently they’ll be backing up when they can’t even keep their own shit backed up or for that matter scalable.
They will suck as usual.. so better stick with AWS or Google…
Nice done. Although it seems it’s Danger’s/Microsoft fault, I’d like to see the details of the contract between Danger and T-Mobile. Did they have a contract with backup guarantee?
Maybe T-Mobile is on the cheap here? Just like to know.
Can they not just have the servers pull any info that’s on any currently-activated Sidekicks? At least then the people who have left their phones on can still keep their data.
But but….. but tmobile is so great! They allow google voice!!
This is amazing, no back up, no back up plan, can you imagine if one of our small business’s did this, it makes me break out in a sweat just imagining it !
Incompetence from these type of companys is ABSOLOUTELY inexcusable !
I think this is rediculous!
I think T-Mobile should allow all sidekick owners to purchase a new phone and get the full discount no matter if they are elligable or not. This is out of hand!
****SO MAD***
“Oh my that’s funny.
I wonder if the servers were running Windows Vista and there were no working drivers for the backup system.”
No, it’s not funny. I work in the entertainment industry and have just lost 1500 contacts that I can’t just get back. Most are clientele whose personal info will NEVER be given out unless I ask them directly (OH, TOO BAD I CANT REACH THEM). This affects my career MAJORLY. T-Mobile gave me a $20.00 credit. Great. I will take myself to dinner. This costs me THOUSANDS. I’ve been with T-mobile since it was Voicestream, and this is the thanks I get. Thank you for jeopardizing my career and my reputation.
1. Why didn’t you keep your own backup?
2. Why did you keep all these critical contacts on a device that would lose them the moment it ran out of juice?
3. Why did you trust a single company to never have any such issues with their servers?
I’m sorry, but you should have been smarter about what you did with your data. It’s no different than storing your data on a computer. The hard drive could go out at any moment. Make a backup. Simple as that.
Jonathan,
You don’t know what you’re talking about (or what you’re asking about).
1. People did back up their data, via Danger’s “powerful hosted back-end services”. Perhaps this was more revolutionary in 2004 when there were less Sidekick/smartphone users. It’s a simple concept: You type in certain data on your device (contacts, calendar, notes) and the data is seamlessly synced to their backend servers. An assumption was made that this data was safe (i.e. backed up). We were paying a monthly fee and reasonably expected our data to be safe.
2. Typically running out of juice (or doing a hard reset) is not a problem at all. Once the device is back up it syncs with those backend servers and all of your data is restores. A better example: Let’s say yoiu completely lose your phone. For many people this means the complete loss of the data on their phone. If a Sidekick user lost their device, they could simply buy a new Sidekick and log on to their account and all their data would be synced to the device. Also, this data is available via a web site (which is handy for those times when you don’t happen to have your device, etc.). This type of data syncing is supposedly why MSFT paid $500 million for Danger.
Again, it was not unreasonable to expect that our data was safe with them. Yes, companies have problems with servers. Outages exist with Google and other places. But a complete loss of data is something else. If tomorrow Google announced that all Gmail (and all gmail address books) has been lost forever for all gmail users, would you be shocked if many people didn’t have a backup of all their gmail?
To back up your second point, I had my first Sidekick in 2005. It went for a swim 6mo later, and I retired it for a Nokia. In 2007 I found myself with a Sidekick 3. When I fired it up, all of my data from 2005 “magically” re-appeared on my brand new phone. Emails, text messages, contacts- everything. It was pretty spiffy.
Well alright, I suppose most people aren’t worried about backups of their data. But then again, most people don’t have 1500 critical contacts that they can likely never get back.
Your points are all based on the assumption that the servers will stay up. Clearly that was not the case here. From what I understand about the Sidekick, the only local copy of this information is lost when the battery dies and is re-synced once reconnected. In this case, the server-side copy is not the backup, it is the ONLY (somewhat) reliable copy.
Sure, the average user won’t think about these things. But when you’re in an industry where your contacts are vital to your business, you should be thinking about it. In that case, it pays to be paranoid.
Um, no. It’s much, much different than storing your data on a local hard disk. In fact, data persistency is one of the primary “selling points” of a cloud-style service like the SK.
Jonathan – that’s like asking someone why they didn’t check the tread on their car tires every time they pulled it out of the garage…or even every week.
When something works for years (yes, I haven’t lost date since 2004, until now), you come to take it for granted.
Yes, it’s a hard lesson learned, but..
You’re really not helping things by pointing out the obvious.
Jonathon, Sidekick users are currently being warned not to take out their batteries or let them die because their data is only cached locally. When reset, the Sidekick syncs with the server where the data is actually stored.
Our data was supposed to be so safe that we were never even offered a simple way to import our data to have it backed up at home…. and it’s why I was paying as much per month as I was. One of Tmobiles selling points when trying to sell the phone to people in my demograpic was the data was safe and sound, and should I leave my phone a bus, my kid flushes it down the toilet or what have you- my data was safe and sound on their servers and when I replaced my phone, voila! contacts, calendars, everything right back on the phone. Presto chango!
IF backing up is so simple, why didn’t Microsoft do it?
“Our data was supposed to be so safe that we were never even offered a simple way to import our data to have it backed up at home….”
While you have very valid points otherwise, I feel I need to correct you on this one. On the Desktop Interface when you log into Tmo’s website, it offers a program to backup your data from the web to your computer. I think at first it was an additional fee but eventually went free.
I agree though. Thank gods I never lost any data *knock wood* but I’m so afraid that when the DI comes back up, my device will sync to the (blank) image of it on their server and I will lose it from my phone. I backed up everything I could, by forwarding them to a Gmail address and a Yahoo address (having learned the lesson of redundancy) but can’t find a way to backup my bookmarks, so those will be gone (and I have several hundred).
That’s a good point. If there isn’t a personal backup solution offered, there is no way for someone to back up their own data. But in that case, why would you choose it as a critical business phone?
I’m not saying Microsoft/Danger shouldn’t be held responsible for this. On the contrary, it was their own fault for not making a backup. However, I am critical of people who have extremely important information they cannot afford to lose and make very little actual effort to protect it. Personal contacts are one thing; it’s more of an annoyance to have to go and get that information back. But when it’s information that you can’t easily get back, you better hold on to that data. Especially when it would directly affect your career to lose it.
When I started with the Sidekick, it wasn’t a critical business phone. It grew into one. In the beginning when there wasn’t a way for me to back it up, I became reliant on the Danger system. How many Sidekick users are actually aware of how the technology behind their device truly works? My guess, not nearly the number that uses them. I originally had all contacts on my sim card. A bit ago I had to get a new SIM Card. The guy at the store said he synced my contacts with it. Guess what, they weren’t.
I think the above SK users also made all other pertinent points I can make.
This.
Honestly, if you supposedly work in the entertainment industry and make THOUSANDS, you should have a computer and some alternative method of storing your precious data. Instead of what is, essentially, a kid’s phone.
That is, if you consider yourself a serious business person.
If I ever see a “working professional” take my information by opening a purple phone that flips open and lights up like a candy kid’s whirling glowsticks, I am running very far away.
Get a blackberry. Get a computer. Get over it, because you didn’t save your own stuff.
Check your phone bill, there’d still be a record of all of your calls. Sucks, but you could hire somebody to script it and come up with a list of unique numbers.
That’s a good idea. If he has made appointments to phone people at certain times then he can cross reference that with the call record.
In future I’d advise anyone with important contact information to keep a written copy. That will protect you against anything up to an EMP.
Then you just need to have contacts stored on 2 different web based services incase of fire/flood.
(Ideally they should be located in different geographic locations from each other and your own).