And Sidekick plans are priced differently from regular data plans. I noticed that when returning in America after a long time in China and I wanted to get a short-term prepaid account. (I didn't; roaming with my Chinese number actually turned out to be CHEAPER than getting a prepaid T-Mo SIM in all ways except incoming voice calls at US$.68/min. I just called back instead of picking up. Even IDD calls back to China were cheaper. And I get full internet versus just T-Zones. And I got the coverage of both AT&T and T-Mo. But that's another tale for a differnt day).

"And besides, if someone blamed Microsoft I bet you'd accuse them of trying to start another OS flamewar."

Are you serious? Are you really degrading this argument down to this because you have no points left to make?

Yeah, that's exactly what I'd do if somebody actually started blaming the real people behind this fiasco. Let's turn everything concerning Microsoft into an Apple vs. Microsoft debate!

/sarcasm

T-Mobile takes money for data as in INTERNET DATA. It's a service, where in, you get internet and other internet like services. Everybody pays for it if you want to use internet features on your phone. I pay T-Mobile so my G1 can have data too, but if my infomration was suddenly gone I'd know instantly that it was Google's fault... not T-Mob's.

And me? I actually have no dog in this race. I was talking in the hypothetical. I have a Japanese Sharp (Sharp makes the Sidekicks; I liked the hardware but not the whole "cloud" thing for reasons that are obvious now so I went for the other option). Oodles of text/call filtering and security features and I can back up all my contacts/texts to miniSD. And I do. And the AQUOS screen makes it a joy to look at. I'm looking forward to upgrading to the new model that just came out with built-in solar panel (10 minutes' charging gets 1 minute talktime or 1 hour standby- not bad) and waterproofing (3ft- pretty good for a phone).

Except the data was NOT in their care. T-Mobile never had your data, doesn't own those servers, and was not in charge of maintaining or upgrading those servers.

T-Mobile is the seller of that specific phone and the service provider of phone and data (as in internet/sms not your calendar and contacts).

Danger/Microsoft were the ones who fucked up. But everybody is so damn obsessed with their "gimmes" and "I want mines" that they don't want to blame Microsoft because they KNOW that if they blame Microsoft then they won't be able to get all the free service and phone upgrades, etc. from T-Mobile who is, by and large, an innocent bystander... they were the messenger.

Look, I'm all for consumer rights; in fact, I'm a damn socialist. I got a barcode tattoo'd on my body to remind myself, everyday, that no matter how much I'm forced to depend on them, corporations are always out for money and never my well being. But I know, I understand, where blame should be directed to.

Everybody wants their own little special prize package for this inconvenience, and they're gonna get it too: [www.engadgetmobile.com] But while your savoring your little prize and the blame is getting passed on to the company who had nothing to do with it; the REAL culprit is getting off scot-free from public disgrace. Do you think Microsoft has learned a lesson from this fiasco? Do you REALLY think this will now prevent them from saving money and attempting another outsource of their server maintenance again?

No, it won't. Because they aren't being held accountable for their royal fuck up. T-Mobile is...

Enjoy your pretty little compensation prize. Maybe you'll get another when this happens again.

@BacteriaEP: When the data is in their care and I'm paying for such to be the case you bet I expect proportionate compensation for everything disappearing.

Thanks a lot T-Mobile

Your Mad Costomer,
Michael

Gizmodo Rumor: "T-Mobile Lets Furious Sidekick Users Ditch Their Contracts for Free" [gizmodo.com]

That Perez Hilton lost all his sidekick data almost makes this whole thing worthwhile.

I understand WHY T-Mob is catching the blame, but they still don't deserve it.

T-Mobile is the service provider. They didn't make the phone, they just sell it. It would be like blaming Best Buy for the problems with your Xbox 360. Or blaming Best Buy when your notebook dies. The only difference here is that T-Mobile is providing an ongoing service of data and phone to these people and as such maintains a constant relationship with them, unlike with the Best Buy/360 example, and therefor paints T-Mob as a culprit when, in reality, they just sell the phones and have nothing to do with the servers, backups, and everything else.

Yes it is Danger/Microsoft's fault as well as Hitachi's (if they were the company) but the bulk of it goes to Danger/Microsoft because they OWN the server. They must maintain it and they, ultimately, were the ones who decided to outsource the upgrading of the server to Hitachi. T-Mob had nothing to do with any of that.

T-Mob's only fault in all this was originally marketing the device as "never needing to be backed up." But, by now, everybody should know hat you always always always back up your stuff.

So you honestly believe that everybody who has a Sidekick now deserves 6 months of free service and a free $500 phone?

Well I guess when something even bad happens, even minor things, a person's entitlement skyrockets by about ten fold. This is America, afterall; land of the frivolous "I spilled hot coffee on myself, now give me $150 million".

I'm not saying no compensation can be given and I'd see a free month of service as being a very generous offer from T-Mob. It's longer than the outage time and it covers any loss in data (about 15-20 days extra) but 6 months and a free smart phone is ridiculous.

Call me when everybody's sidekick explodes and then we'll talk seriously about this kind of compensation.

@Gracegottcha:

In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash...

Thanks to Shep...

@Colonel Jack O'Neill:

+1 on Perez Hilton

He probably had to have it explained to him by a minon why his address book list didn't work...

@ctaylor: *Ï€r^2

SANs aren't bulletproof, and RAID redundancy helps reduce points of failure, but it is by no means perfect.

And you can backup your data every 10 minutes, but if you never verify your backups are valid, they're still worthless.

I know that installing Google Apps, more than one of the mail servers is *.googlemail.com instead of *.google.com

[en.wikipedia.org]

Craptacular
Turn Your Head and Cough
All Your Data Are Belong To Us
Three Stooges Computing (now 100% Moe free!!!1!!!!11!!!)
Computers & Electromagnets Together
Oh, They Have The Internet On Computers Now?

why not the LS2LS7? @ Oct 10th 2009 4:12PM

I've been getting the straight dope from the inside on this. Let me assure you, your data IS gone. Currently MS is trying to get the devices to sync the data they have back to the service as a form of recovery.

It's not a server failure. They were upgrading their SAN, and they outsourced it to a Hitachi consulting firm. There was room for a backup of the data on the SAN, but they didn't do it (some say they started it but didn't wait for it to complete). They upgraded the SAN, screwed it up and lost all the data.

All the apps in the developer store are gone too.

[www.engadget.com]

Because to my mind this implies that, like, the one server farm that ran everything burned to the ground and there were no off-site backups.

Meanwhile Microsoft was planing to introduce a similar concept called Pink on Verizon to help Verizon compete against the iPhone, taking away the T-Mobile exclusive deal.

Many think of those who had a SideKick as being mere kiddies exchanging text messages all day long on a 'toy' phone. That may have been Balmer's viewpoint too and maybe why he allegedly didn't spend much money supporting the SideKick.

I agree though, that since Microsoft now owns Danger, they are responsible for what happens at Danger.

Even though I agree that the OP is asking too much and shouldn't expect to get that kind of compensation, what do you mean narrowing the blame?

First of all, on the customer side, the only contract they have is with T-mobile. And with the sidekick, you can't get the same kind of service anywhere else besides from T-mobile, it even has their logo on the phone. Any support questions/issues go to T-mobile, not to Microsoft/Danger. This means no matter who caused the problem down the line, T-mobile has to compensate for the customers. T-mobile can choose to get payment from Microsoft/Danger, but first they have to handle the customers. Also by your same logic, since Microsoft/Danger itself contracted out the upgrade (rumored to Hitachi), should Hitachi be responsible for paying back customers directly? I don't think so.

So yes Microsoft/Danger (and the contractor they hired) caused the problems, but T-mobile has to take the responsibility.

If a user never backed up their gadget, well that's not company's problem. Outage - yes; personal data - no.

There's more on this from AppleInsider by the same author.
[www.appleinsider.com]

@Segador: +1

It's main drive is backed up with a Firewire RAID mirror and also via a separate WiFi RAID stack that does hourly incremental backups of everything on my LAN.

Daily backups are made to an off-site server.

...and that's just a personal laptop. A commercial service with hundred of thousands of customers paying millions of dollars in fees for the service should be at least as well backed up as a personal laptop.

Good show, Microsoft! Right on top of things, once again, I see.

Tomas
University Place, WA

I am hoping (wishing?) that everyone who reads about this experience will now take the time to backup their stuff. Burn your 'My Documents' folder (or wherever you store your docs) to DVD. And do it twice, so you can keep a copy with you and a copy with a friend across the country.

So, remember: Create data; Backup Data; Repeat Backup. Create data.....

The files you save might be your own.

Another thought would be the 6 P's: Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

(Unless Apple has spies... DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN!)

Why is everyone on twitter complaining they can't cancel their service without having to pay the cancellation fees? Isn't failure of service and non-delivery of goods a reason for a chargeback?

The Sidekick never appealed to me that much as a device, but with its keyboard it seems like its users who want to abandon t-mo over this would most like a crackberry or the Palm Pre, or perhaps one of the Android slider devices with a big landscape keyboard.

tmobile must have thought that it would be cheaper to just offer their customers a free month of data since it cost of running the network is costing them next to nothing, than to pay for having the hosting company do proper backups.

I am now tempted to go make a 4th copy of everything....

@hardcle:
That's stretching it a bit there.
Development has nothing to do with the daily backup of servers. Danger is the one responsible for the day to day operation of the servers. Danger and thier employees are the ones ultimitly responsible for the backups and the verification of said backups daily, or in the case of data like this, multiple times a day.
Try to say that because MS had less developers working on the platform so it's thier fault is REALLY grasping at straws.

It's an unfortunate case of kill the messenger. Whiel T-Mob has probably never even seen those servers people will undoubtedly blame them for everythng that has gone wrong.

They are the face of the Sidekick.

Hah! Hahaha!

That's a joke right?

First of all let's narrow down the blame a little bit: this is Danger/Microsoft's bad. T-Mobile just gives the service, they don't store your information. This is an unfortunate case of kill the messenger since these are actually T-Mobile customers, but I doubt anybody from T-Mob has even seen those servers.

Second, you demand a free $500+ phone and free service for 6 months for losing some contacts and calender information and... maybe... some photos? How much do you think that stuff is really worth? I know if it happened to me it'd be about an hours worth of work setting everything else up again.

Finally, you should ALWAYS back up your important information. Let's not pretend like this is the first time this kind of thing has happened before. Entire websites have been lost, data been erased, and now contact and calender information is gone as well. If you've heard it once, you've heard it about a thousand more times from techies all around the world: BACK UP YOUR STUFF. Otherwise you'll lose it when something like this happens.

What happened sucks. I don't deny it. I'm a T-Mob customer now, but with a G1 instead. I'd be very pissed if my service was out for days and in turn it cost me a bunch of my personal contacts/calendar information, but it's certainly not worth demanding outrageous compensations for fairly minor losses.

For the record, I do feel for the people who had serious opportunities lost to them due to this outage. I really do.

Here's the relevant passage:
"The final operator who is going to be pissed is T-Mobile, who has been just as loyal of a partner to Danger as Sharp has been. I don't know exactly what Microsoft has been telling them, but they have no doubt realized that they've been cut out of this deal in favor of their largest competitor. What's worse is that apparently Microsoft has been lying to them this whole time about the amount of resources that they've been putting behind Sidekick development and support (in reality, it was cut down to a handful of people in Palo Alto managing some contractors in Romania, Ukraine, etc.).

"The reason for the deceit wasn't purely to cover up the development of Pink but also because Microsoft could get more money from T-Mobile for their support contract if T-Mobile thought that there were still hundreds of engineers working on the Sidekick platform. As we saw from their recent embarrassment with Sidekick data outages, that has clearly not been the case for some time.

@Razor512: "T-mobile probably didn't have any of this done and they didn't pay for backup servers either."

Your absolutly right. T-Mobile didn't do this. That's because Danger/Microsoft own, run, and manage the servers. T-Mobile doesn't touch them.

Danger/Microsoft should have done a back-up before they did their upgrade, but they didn't, and that is sad for T-Mobile and Sidekick users.

I'm still old school. After having 4+ cell phones... nothing beats an old fashioned address book.

@Razor512: I would be shocked if T-Mobile's contract with MS/Danger didn't include a requirement for data backup. Having a contract doesn't guarantee that people will do as they promise. I would be curious to find out how often T-Mobile checked up on them, if at all.

but wheres the danger in doing that? :)

I also agree.

People need to understand that just because something is stored in the cloud or on an external device or something like that, doesn't mean they have a "backup" of it.

The idea of having a backup copy of something is that if you have two copies, then if one copy is lost, you can restore it using the other copy.

So just in case anyone isn't sure what this means. It means that buying an external hard drive and moving all your pictures to it doesn't back up your data at all. In fact, it's more dangerous because external drives that get moved around a lot are more apt to fail. In order to have a true backup of your data, you need to have it in two or more places.

T-Mobile is on the hook because they are the party that consumers contracted with to provide a service (from what I've read). T-Mobile then contracts out with Danger/MSFT to provide services.

If my Gmail account is deleted, my ISP has nothing to do with that. I have not contracted with my ISP to provide email. I have an agreement with Gmail that requires google to provide email that is accessible through any ISP.

If I ran a daycare that you brought your kid to, and I then turn around and send these kids to people's houses, who would you sue if something happened to your kid? Me, who you are paying to watch your kid, or the person I sent your kid to? The person who hurt your kid may face criminal charges, but from a civil standpoint you have no grounds to sue them.

Same principle applies here - consumers contracted with T-Mobile for a service (data backup), and T-Mobile can not deliver that service. Doesn't matter why T-Mobile can't. T-Mobile can not hold up their end of the contract.

This is also why cloud computing can go piss off.

It's hard to see why T-Mobile should be on the hook for anything. All they really do is have the device on their network. Danger controls the server infrastructure behind the Sidekick. It's akin to getting pissed at your ISP if your Gmail account gets wiped out.

T-Mobile told users they didn't need to back-up their data because it has probably never been possible. One of the selling points of the Sidekick is that if you lose your device, all of the data can be retrieved on a new device by pulling it from the server. If personal, user-made backups were at all possible, they would be telling Sidekick owners to do them now.

completely inexcusable.

While I would never trust a 3rd party to look after my important data, I would have trusted them with day to day stuff like this.

I wonder how many people here can actually remember each and every phone number in their address book to re enter it again, it will take longer than a month because you will have to contact the ones you do know and wait for the ones you don't know to contact you so you can add them again. a month of data doesn't help.

they should at least have offsite backups. Even the one of the small companies I currently work for does it, surely a company as big as t-mobile or microsoft could do it also.

Daily backups are simple to do and only impact server performance slightly when the backup is in process and it is done at off peak hours.

@twophrasebark:

They, according to something read on another site, offered '1 free month of data service' a.k.a. 'shut up and take it with no lube'.

They must have said that. Right?

Right????????

There is no such thing as 100% reliable (enter gadget name here)

Its my understanding that it was a failed SANs (Storage Area Network) upgrade. There are ways to mess up disks with RAID and partitioning to make recovery impossible. I.E. The disks are completely written over, preventing a restore.

That being said, I would expect there to be multiple systems, where you break the mirror, upgrade one, test it, then rebuild the mirror. Even then there are ways to screw it up.

nope, no self respecting company providing servers/hosting will host any content with out first having a backup, not unless you go with their cheapest package that doesn't cover having a backup of the server made daily

so it is t-mobile's fault for not getting a safe hosting plan.

one person will be on their sidekick texting away and another person will rush by and grab the phone and run off the bus with it and will be long gone by the time the person got up to react to the situation. In cases like that you can use your other cellphone (many of then had a normal cellphone also since the sidekick sucked for voice calls), and t-mobile will stop the service to the stolen sidekick and the criminal will loose access to the info on it, but in this case they don't care because they can use the same sidekick with another service plan or unlock it and sell it on ebay.

I have worked with companies which have had fires in which a server was caught in it and much of the drive was physically damaged, blackened due to the flames, they paid certain monthly fees and were covered and a professional data recovery company took the drives and were able to recover almost all of the data.

T-mobile probably didn't have any of this done and they didn't pay for backup servers either.

To any other companies with servers, always have a off site backup of your servers that can be shipped to you when needed.

@Gracegottcha:

Apparently T-Mobile/Microsoft/Danger don't follow the Bible....

You can never relay on a third party server, always do your own backups, even if they tell you they do it.

And one more thing, FUCK Perez Hilton

One day I hope people wake up and realize that "cloud computing" is not their friend.

@TheRedSeven:

Agreed. Definite failure by Danger/Microsoft.

Me and a friend are wondering who lost their jobs for not managing data properly, especially if the speculation that a botched network upgrade is to blame.

While T-Mobile should step up to the plate and offer more than a 'shut you up here's 1-month of free data', we shouldn't blame T-Mobile directly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this error seems to be on Microsoft/Danger's side, and not on T-Mobile's. I get that T-Mobile is the exclusive service provider for the Sidekick, but can you blame them when MS/Danger fail to have adequate server backups?

My guess is that T-Mobile was getting jerked around by MS/Danger for those 10 days with promises of 'temporary' etc. That is just an uneducated guess, but still.

My hatred would be pouring out to Danger/Microsoft/Sidekick rather than to T-Mobile.

your data is yours.
always.
always.
ALWAYS make backups.

even paper and pen if nothing else.

Next time spring for a device you can sync to your 'puter machine.

This is why I never went with Verizon. they hate Macs and could never sync to them and wanted me to trust them with the only backup of my contacts.

You'd think there would be a little more data redundancy in situations like this. My HOME computer has more data redundancy than this.

Kind of inexcuseable if you ask me.