T-Mobile's Sidekick Sidelined by Data Loss

The most popular smart phone among those too young to drink or serve in the Marine Corps is the Sidekick by T-Mobile. For the past 11 days, users of this trendy device have been in cell phone hell. For a few days, they had no access to their contacts, pictures and calendars. Now, it appears many of them have lost those things permanently, thanks to the idea of "cloud computing" and a very simple failure to adequately back up data. The fact that Microsoft bought the company that services T-Mobile's Sidekick operation merely adds to the fun.

The whole mess appears to have begun when a Storage Area Network update/upgrade started. Microsoft's subsidiary Danger (right there an omen) got Hitachi to come in and handle the project. Something went horribly wrong, but no one knows what -- or if someone does know, he ain't saying. In any case, the data either wasn't backed up, or if Microsoft is to be believed (this journal relies on many grains of salt when listening to Microsoft), the back up was inadequate to the need. In either case, this is an error only a neophyte should make.

T-Mobile, of course, is the company that looks bad in front of its users. Its customers don't know and don't care if the problem stems from Danger and Microsoft or Hitachi or a combination thereof. All they know is their data are being lost, and their data service (for which they pay about $20 a month) hasn't worked in close to two weeks. T-Mobile, the number four cell phone company in the US, is losing customers to bigger and smaller operations and can hardly deal with this kind of mess.

Regrettably, the company has been less than forthcoming about the problem. It took calls to technical support a week ago to discern that the company had no idea what was going on. The last information posted on the firm's website is dated 10/10/09, at 12:35 Pacific Daylight Time. All it suggests is that users NOT reset their devices or let the power drain. If that happens, any data will be lost and there's no back up.

This is a prime example of why "cloud computing: is so dangerous. This concept sounds great in theory. A big data farm far away keeps all of a user's data and applications and downloads the information as needed. This means less memory is needed in the device itself. The problems arise when there are communications problems with the remote site, or in this case, a disaster at the site.

This just about finishes off the Sidekick. T-Mobile is offering users a free month of its data service, but since that isn't available right now, that isn't worth much. The company will have to let people out of their contracts and provide them with options for different phones if it hopes to keep these customers. A class action lawsuit looms. All this simply because someone didn't make a copy. Shame!

© Copyright 2009 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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