Latest update on the Sidekick data disaster: Microsoft has published a letter from Sidekick honcho Roz Ho saying that the company now thinks it has “recovered most, if not all” of the user data that’s been missing. The mess started October 2nd when a system outage began, and will apparently continue at least a bit longer while Microsoft finishes prepping the data for restoration.

A few notes:

1) By way of explanation for the meltdown, Ho’s letter says that Microsoft has “determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up.” That’s pretty much a tautology given that the company had already warned customers that the data might be lost forever.

2) Ho’s title is kinda unfortunate at the moment: Corporate Vice President, Premium Mobile Experiences.

3) A service outage/data disruption that lasts half a month isn’t as bad as losing user data forever, but it still ranks among the worst service breakdowns in the history of personal technology. (In fact, if you can think of any involving major companies that lasted anywhere near as long, remind me.)

 
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Read more: Microsoft, Sidekick, Smartphones