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These are some rants and thoughts I’ve been saving up about the Sidekick.
I swear I am going to start a forum for hiptops where no whining is allowed.
Apparently most people treat their Sidekicks pretty roughly. I find it hard to believe they fall apart as easily as people claim. I’m sure they’ve all dropped it at least once. And while drops and bumps are accidents and do happen, they are not good for the unit and do shake it up…that doesn’t mean the unit is faulty. It might not be very sturdy, but I guarantee that if you treat a piece of personal electronics nicely, it will last you longer than if you throw it around.
Stop telling me you hate your Sidekick and you’re going to get a Treo or whatever. Get your damn replacement and get off the hiptop forum. Quit sticking around and complaining.
It does suck that there’s no Mac sync. (I’m a PC user with a CSK, so I don’t have sync at all, but that’s beside the point.) But is whining the only thing to do? At least Halsted wrote to somebody about it. But how about exploring other options? Maybe add in an extra step? Don’t just whine - innovate! (But what the hell is with this “spiritual emptiness” bit?!)
I need to cut one of my WriteRight screen protectors (sized for the Palm m130) down to fit the Sidekick screen. Because the speaker and microphone are on the front of the device, when I hold it to my ear the screen gets face oils on it. (I’m not excessively greasy, only as much as everybody else!) Alternatively - or additionally - I need to get a better handsfree device than the one I currently have…my ears must be shaped funny because those earbuds never stay in. (Danger was smart to put the phone bits on the back of the Hiptop2!)
I probably shouldn’t have signed up for the data service in the first place…it’s pricey ($20/month) and I won’t want to get rid of it when the time comes.
Comments
$20 is actually one of the cheaper unlimited data plans out there. Only Sprint is cheaper at $15. Verizon is $45 and I think Cingular is $40, but it’s a bit unclear.
I had to laugh, though as I spent countless hours reading and posting message over at hiptop.com for the year and a half I owned an original (black and white) and a color sidekick. There are some real characters there. There’s lots of whining, people who will never be satisfied no matter what. But a lot of it is people like me who were just voicing frustration as a way of getting something off our chest. The problem is that at any given time, you could be pissed at the device and want to get it off your chest, but later you might read someone basically doing the same thing, but because you’d already moved on, it seemed really annoying. Funny psychology, huh?
There’s a Yahoo! Group that I started which might be a little better because it is moderated, but I haven’t read it in quite a while - it’s called dangersidekick. You might check that out and maybe it will be a little more useful? Hiptop.com does have some good info, but you have to go through a lot of crap to find it.
Personally, I moved on and got a Treo myself, but although I generally enjoy it a lot more because I’m not frustrated by artificial limits that are put on it by T-Mobile (like the SK), Pa1mOne has been having there share of real fubars when it’s come to their newest model, which I’m upgrading to. Memory issues, pricing issues, you name it. Seems like they are just brain dead. So Danger isn’t the only company out there that has problems. Mostly I think it’s just that people like to complain. I did try to do something about my complaints by starting a petition, but it didn’t work. You can only do so much. The thing I finally realized, I think, was that you have to look at it more dispassionately. You can try to convince the company of their mistake in various ways, but complaining on a forum isn’t going to do much, especially when tons of others are doing the same thing. The best thing you can do is, after giving the company a chance to recognize their mistake and make some kind of change, is just to move on to something else and write a letter to the company telling the why you left. Angry letters I think most of the time will just get written off as some overly emotional ass, but a nice, polite letter explaining why they are losing customers may just jar someone enough to take notice and to make some changes, although it will be too late to benefit you personally…