The Mossberg Solution
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG and KATHERINE BOEHRET
Cellphones keep getting sleeker and smaller, which means they are also getting easier to lose or misplace. For instance, Motorola's latest model, the SLVR, is so thin and light, you'd hardly notice if it slipped out of your pocket or purse.
And, of course, losing your cellphone can be a disaster, because it contains your address book. In fact, it often contains the only copy of your address book. Except for a few smart phones, like the Palm Treo, most cellphone models -- especially the small ones that are easiest to lose -- don't synchronize with your computer to back up data.
So, how can you back up your data to protect against losing your phone?
Most of the big-name phone carriers offer services that will store your cellphone contacts for a relatively small monthly fee. But these services, which are designed in part to keep you tied to a carrier, aren't widely used, or even well known to most users.
There are also various carrier-independent backup software products out there, but they involve the use of a computer and can be clumsy and complicated. Some use cumbersome cables to attach your phone to a PC, others use your phone's messaging capabilities or Bluetooth functionality to send data onto a nearby hard drive.
But this week, we took a look at a new product from Spark Technology Corp. in San Jose, Calif., that eliminates the need for a computer altogether: CellStik. This $40 product is a pocket-size USB thumb drive with a cellphone adapter on one end and a USB adapter on the other. By plugging the phone adapter into your cellphone and pressing a button on the CellStik, you can have your contacts backed up on the device in just seconds -- problem solved.
In our tests, we found CellStik to be a smart solution that really works, and it's about as easy to use as possible. We did have one problem with it, but that was relatively minor compared with the potential loss of all your contact data when a phone goes missing.