Microsoft Says Sidekick Data May Be Saved

In a press release by Roz Ho, Corporate Vice President of Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation (which would be considered an ironic title to anyone who's used Windows Mobile), the company said that they had recovered most of the customer data that was believed lost.

Most is better than nothing, which is what customers had been expecting, and on top of the one month of free service that had been previously offered, might assuage some anger. At the same time, however, T-Mobile has offered $100 to those whose data is permanently lost, and some have suggested it should be $100 period.

Microsoft also indicated that they are working around the clock to resolve the issue, and plans to start with contacts, then move to calendar, notes, tasks, photos and high scores. It will not be a quick process, however, which is bound to further annoy Sidekick users. The company indicated they will update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.

For customers who have felt the data loss for two weeks already, it's hardly comforting. Additionally, it's hardly going to be well received that Microsoft feels only a minor number of users were affected. As with anything, even if only 1% of users are affected, if you're in that 1%, it feels like 100%.

Microsoft noted that the outage was created by a system failure. Of course, we already knew that, but the failure caused a failure in the backup database as well. That is what was believed, so there is no news there.

The expectation is the lawsuits will continue, as this has been one big pain for users. It brings to mind the fact that even the cloud can be trusted 100%. No one should assume that storage in any one place, even online, is safe.