Don’t waste your money…

So, if you've read previous blogs, you know I am using a Cingular 2125 Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone.
But this morning, I had a problem, where the headset jack broke, making is so that the phone only made sound through a headset. Kinda sucked. But unfortunately for me, not too suprising, as I've had this happen to me a few times over the years with my iPAQs.

Upon realizing what has happened to my beloved phone, I plug my phone into my PC and run PocketBackup ( http://www.thbi.de/us/software/pock…ckup/index.html). It dutifuly backs up the contents of my phone and I then head-off to the Cingular store for a replacement. No drama there and I'm back in about 20 minutes with a new phone.

I power up the new phone, plug it into my PC and run Pocket Restore. There's my first clue that this software isn't what is cracked up to be. First, I can't find the backup file for the phone. Why? Because apparantly the backups are dependent on the phone name (each WM device has to have a name) and the factory-default name is different from what I HAD called my first phone.

So I was forced to load up Tweaks2K for my phone and change the name to what my first phone was named. OK, now it can find the file and does a restore. Now, I've done a fair amount of customizing on my phone, and one of the many change I've made is to Start Menu and how the programs are listed. All of my most frequently used programs are right on the first screen. So imagine my suprise when I see the factory-default Start Menu. What gives?

Well, apparently it doesn't copy anything in the Windows directory or its sub-directories. Nothing. AND not the registry. For those of you who don't know, the registry is where all kinds of info about your phone is stored and its important. So you need to RE-REGISTER all of you programs all over again, etc. THAT SUCKS!

But then, to put the icing on the cake, I realize that my Ring Profiles don't work. Will only do Normal. I tried everything to get them to work. Finally, I had to do a hard-reset. Profiles worked again. Turns out, that there are xml files that make up your profile settings on your phone, and Pocket Backup backs those up. Great? No. Because apparently copying over them does something to them and then the don't work. Had to do another hard-reset, but this time I realized it only about 10 minutes into the process.

So, short answer to this story is, save your money. These folks are asking for $24 for something you could do yourself. If it can't restore a phone from a hard-reset, then it shouldn't be called a backup program!