Three's a charm. I would have blogged about this sooner, but I have been giving my Treo 750 and Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, twice already, while I sought a solution. No more!
Today, I plugged my Treo 750 into my PC to synchronize it. I want my PC to frequently get the changes I make to mobile documents, contacts, etc. I do this so that if my phone is lost, stolen, or broken, then I will still have some version of my information backed up on my PC.
And today, for the third time since purchasing my Treo 750 last year, the Windows Mobile Device Center gleefully told me my device wasn't set up and asked me if I would like to set up my device now. Set up my device!? It was already set up! The device and PC had lost their "partnership status" again.
Worse yet, when I unplugged my Treo and had a look at what state it was left in, all of my contacts and all of my mobile documents were simply erased. Yes, that's it, erased. Gone. My intent in plugging in my Treo had been to perform a backup of the information changed recently, yet instead of that ActiveSync erased precisely the data I was trying to preserve in the first place!
I still have stale contact information in my desktop version of Outlook, and a stale copy of my mobile documents I grabbed another time "just in case". But this is ridiculous — weeks of changes, gone.
A smartphone oriented towards business users should not be unreliable. What is supposed to be a backup operation should never erase the data source when it fails. Let me say that again:
So I am shouting loud and clear: Stay away from Windows Mobile-based devices and Microsoft ActiveSync. I give Microsoft an "F" for Windows Mobile, Active Sync, and the Windows Mobile Device Center. You are asking for grief and headaches if you purchase a device running Windows Mobile. No feature of Windows Mobile could ever make up for such destructive backup failures.
** DON'T BUY! ** DON'T BUY! ** DON'T BUY! **
Do not interpret any series of workarounds or half-measures that you may find on the Internet as options that feasibly lead to satisfaction with your device. No workaround I have seen and tried has been satisfactory to me. Of course, if you have evidence to the contrary, please share... I'm stuck with this phone a little while longer! :-(
If you are a poor soul who has such a device, until you replace it, you should treat your data very carefully and do not assume that the provided software will do the job of backing up your data correctly. In fact, assume the opposite.
