About Us

About this site

About Unidentified Information

You want to keep it, and everything about the way it is sold assumes you will not. Repairability, warranties and your own backups are one argument. Three names, one fight. This site holds one position and keeps testing it against real hardware, real service desks and the sort of terms and conditions nobody is expected to read.

What you get here

• Unidentified Information has been running since 2009 and is still publishing. There are close to 500 articles you can search.
• We check a repair claim by trying it. If a part is glued in, we say it is glued in, and we say what that means for the second owner. Advertising and sponsored placement pay for this site, and every paid link is labelled. A manufacturer cannot buy a better repairability verdict here, which is worth saying plainly.
• The questions are the ones asked five years in. Can this battery be changed by a normal person. Does the warranty survive opening it. If the service stops tomorrow, do I still have my own copy of anything.
• We think a device you cannot open is a device you are renting. That is a strong claim, and we keep making it on purpose.
• Follow along and you gradually build the habit that matters most, which is holding your own copies of the things you would be upset to lose. You also keep kit for longer.

How we work

We open things. Where a repair is claimed to be impossible, we find out what it would actually take, in parts and in time, and where exactly it went wrong. Then we say if it was worth it.

A backup you cannot reach without paying somebody is not really a backup.

Keep Unidentified Information going

Keep your own copy of everything.

Follow along and the case for keeping things gets easier to make. Read on. If one piece here means somebody still has their photos after an account is closed, or gets a repair done that a shop called impossible, that is enough.

Unidentified Information is one of fifteen titles published by G R Sites, an independent publisher writing since 2008, under one editorial policy and one disclosure standard. The other fourteen argue the same corner from other angles. The bill. The scam that almost worked. The living room. The job.

See the other titles in the network →