I got a new T-Mobile Shadow™ a couple of weeks ago. Nice phone...about the same size as my old RAZR, but uses a slide instead of the clamshell design. So far, I really like it.

Today I discovered that there's a device software upgrade. OK, no biggie...I can do this. So I go to the T-Mobile support site and (yeah, hard to believe!) read the instructions.

For the most part, they're really well written. There are graphics showing what I'll see when I get to the actual upgrade part, nice warnings to let me know that I'll be resetting my phone to the factory defaults and, even better, a note that tells me to expect the progress indicator to stall at one point. They also provide approximate times for each of the steps...I find this really nice, given that we're talking about it taking almost a half hour.

But there's one bad thing. At one point, I will have to save the upgrade file to my desktop. The instructions say, "...type T-Mobile Shadow™ MSFP Upgrade", and the screenshot shows the same thing.

How exactly do you type TM in superscript in a file name?

OK, so first we have to try to figure out how many users will actually use the instructions. (Given the various warnings, we're going to hope it's most of them! But I kinda doubt it.) But then we have to think about how many of these are new users or users that just aren't that comfortable with installing software (I call this the "mom" test...will my mom be able to follow these instructions or will she be calling me for help?).

I know that Shadow is a trademark. But really, do users have to enter TM in the file name? I doubt it. And using superscript just further confuses the issue.

Overall...I'd give them a A-. Good instructions, nice clarity, effective notes and warnings.