If you were to use hiptop.com's forums as your only market research on the Sidekick / Hiptop, not only would you mindwipe the word "Hiptop" from your brain but you'd probably consider quitting your job and moving to an ice cave in the Arctic Circle. There's just a ton of threatening complaints and sad teen IM shoutouts from kids with rich parents. Some posters even use their forum avatar to display how many Sidekicks they've been through.

I think the damn thing is great. I had one crazy lockup about two months after I bought it (hard reset fixed it.) And AIM has been flaky lately (invisible logouts, inapplicable buddy error messages), but it's something that the Sidekick people are working on. The AIM problems may be annoying, but they don't render the device unuseable by any means.

Sure, there's features I'd love to see added... more flexibility for in-camera pictures (including ftp), better games, flash support in browser... but for the price (<$200 for the unit and $40/month for service) it's been a great buy and a lifestyle-changing tech addition.

It's been a while since I've posted to Hiptop Nation, the gathering point for Sidekick-powered bloggers; the novelty of moblogging has worn off. I do still check the site every so often. I often think that it would be more interesting if the weblog was pictures only, since the collection of random personal photos provides an instant visual melting pot.

In a couple months, T-Mobile's unlimited data plan will end, and Sidekicks nationwide will suddenly hit a 15MB/month bandwidth cap. Unless you upgrade your monthly plan, of course. Well, I've been monitoring my itemized bills, and I am in no danger of hitting the limit. And I use mine every month for weblogging, browsing and lots of IMing. So hooray for me.

But anyway, my Sidekick works fine. Here's hoping this article will turn up in somebody's future Google searches for "hiptop problems."