Unable to restore iphone

Have you been through this ? http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1414

Crickey, how many people have got the Error 29 iphone when it gets to the firmware upgrade and now the iphone is stuck in the recovery mode loop just because the owner having faith in APPLE innocently pressed update in Itunes unconsciously thinking it would be ok just like they have done before...??? Suddenly they find they have to contemplate a nightmare life without an iphone, questioning weather they can recover data, songs etc...? Even just to get it working again... Well I am stuck in this position. I have been through all the recommendations by Apple to no avail. Is using the third party "Irecovery" the only solution? Or is Apple sorting this issue out? Help APPLE please give us direction and hope for this bug in the latest upgrade for the iphone...Emotions are running high....Please...

Nobody from Apple reads these boards.

Take it to a Genius Bar and get them to sort it out if you cannot do so yourself, and it froze in mid-update.

No genius bars where I am...could not find any support from Apple, looked though forums found about about error 29 on the 3.1.3 iphone upgrade,I ended up using the third party irecovery on a windows XP platform ( could not get it to work on the mac platform) and now after 7 hours have finally got my iphone to at least work... using my back up now but it did not give me all the apps, so I am reinstalling them. (I had over 200). Will not be upgrading to 3.1.3 till it is fixed. Very wary. I would recommend people reading the forums on Error 29 on the update before they inadvertently press the update button!