All your songs and videos in your pocket? No, more like in your black hole, known as the “Other” files – gone and inaccessible since there isn’t a file finder – in your pocket.

This is what exactly happened after a series of self-triggered connecting and disconnecting of the iPhone. The audio and video files self-destroy into a pile of rumble. The hours I spent closing monitoring and synchronizing these files are wasted.

Don’t even think about the iTunes Music Store on my phone. The DRM-ed songs I buy would be erased in a sync error, or a wipe-out.

All I can hear is the constantly beeping two-tone ‘connected’ sound of the iPhone, orchestrating with the two-tone ‘device detected’ sound of Windows Vista. The podcasts and videos I prepared for this morning’s commute is no more: the last chance of me forgiving this device is gone. Very very sad.

I checked all points of potential error:

• USB port: Unlikely. It is the second USB port on the motherboard, and it is a USB 2.0 connection.
• The USB cable: Unlikely. It is the original cable that came with the box.
• Port connection: Possible. Is the Apple hardware that badly made? But it’s possible. I unplugged and plugged it a few times yesterday already for the AT&T activation.
• iPhone firmware: Possible. It is not the most updated. But then, the firmware update download never completes for me.
• iTunes and the iPhone hardware driver for Windows Vista: Most likely. After all, iTunes never really got fixed for Windows Vista. Numerous reports can be found around the Internet even in the latest version.
• Windows Vista: Unlikely. If it is the problem, my previous Windows Mobile phone would have never worked properly.

So kudos to the Apple software development for PC. You guys have created the worst software experience, and spoiled all the goodness of a good piece of hardware your company had made.

I’m returning the phone tomorrow, so that the total loss will be kept minimal, i.e. $30.