T-Mobile Sidekick users – do not power off your device!!

I usually don’t post on Sundays, but this is really important.

If you have a T-Mobile Sidekick, do NOT power off your T-Mobile sidekick or let it lose its’ charge over the weekend.

According to several tech sites, “T-Mobile [is] reporting that ALL personal data stored on Sidekicks… has been lost.” Any contacts, photos, calendars, or to-do lists that haven’t been locally backed up are gone. And anything that is still on a sidekick from T-Mobile will be lost if the phone is turned off and on again.

So, again, do NOT power off your T-Mobile sidekick or let it lose its’ charge over the weekend.

A big post on T-Mobile’s site has the details. And it’s bad with a big red capital B. “Regrettably… 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… The likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low.”

On a related note, all new T-Mobile sales have been suspended on the T-Mobile site. And T-Mobile isn’t going to say anything official until Monday the 12th.

Nice. I wonder what idiot at T-Mobile did a major server upgrade without a full local backup and a backup of that backup? And no contingency plans for a complete server failure? And no off-site data mirrors? And no 30 day deep storage backup?

Hey T-Mobile. If you survive this, you might want to hire someone who knows more about computers than the ones you got now. Just sayin’.