My fuckin' kindle is already broken! The screen is all jumbled up and I can't read it. Which sucks because I have about fifty books on it and am reading three of them at the same time! So I am stuck with no reading material. Which sucks even more than usual because we are going to the Moda/ENK shows tomorrow and I need the kindle to while away the hours while the wife looks at crap we are never gonna buy for the store.
Luckily I am under warranty so they are shooting one right out to me even before I send back the broken one. Which is pretty cool. But still. This shit doesn't happen when you buy books.
Of course the stack of kindles doesn't fall over and bury you either so there is that.
15 comments:
You have an iPad, why not just get the Kindle App? No need for a separate Kindle.
You can't read an Ipad in the sun. So if you go to the beach or the pool you can't lay out and read your kindle. Too much glare for the Ipad.
Get a Kindle App for your phone.
Wait, how did you break this Kindle? Were you using it on the toilet?
On if we are lucky!
And extra points for the Collier brothers reference, if indeed that's who you referring to, Troop.
True that, the glare is bad.
My Kindle's starting to freeze up and generally not respond.
Of course, I have all my books backed up at Amazon and on the Kindle app for Mac OS X. If you're brighter than the inside of a moose, it's actually hard to lose books using a Kindle.
But, from what I've seen, you're lucky to get a year out of the damn thing. Got mine last February. It's on its last legs. I'll give another one a try soon, but if that one dies within a year (should I live so long), Amazon has lost me.
I will not, however, return to paper books. E-books, with a non-backlit, non-refreshing screen, are definitely the wave of the future. I have a groaning bookshelf, for cheap, at my fingertips with the Kindle.
Amazon just needs to make less crappy hardware.
I did more research about Kindle freezes, and found this possibly helpful piece in PC World from about a year ago.
It seems the metal clips holding the Kindle in the leather case from Amazon may be shorting out the device. From the picture, it looks like they used raw metal clips back then. My case has black-painted metal clips, possibly to insulate them. I notice wear on the upper clip, however, exposing bare metal. Something's been rubbing internally in the Kindle.
One user cut the tips from surgical gloves and used them to cover the ends of the clips for insulation. I tried this, but there was too much rubber even from surgical gloves, and the clips jammed in the case, giving new meaning to "all thumbs."
I've now tried filing the ends off the clips to prevent them from touching internal electronics, and coating the bare ends with thin Crazy glue to insulate them.
The Kindle now seems to be working fine without the case. Whether my midnight case mods will do the trick remains until the glue dries and another day dawns.
I wonder if they allow Kindles in the joint. I will call some folks and report back. I'm guessing no.
Nook
E.
I think you have it exactly right Tim. I have the cover with the light which is really great for me.
I can lay in bed with all the lights shut and just read the kindle. Last night I had to turn the lights on to read a book because I wasn't using the case with the light attachment. I bet that is why this thing breaks.
Well, it turns out removing a bit from the tips of the little clips that hold the Kindle in the case solved the problem, at least for me.
I carefully filed about 1/2 millimeter (approximately .020", or about a third less than 1/32") off the tips of both clips, keeping the shape still rounded. As I mentioned in my last comment, for good measure I coated the filed ends with Crazy Glue. You could use a dab of any fast-drying paint or lacquer. This is just a little extra insurance to electrically insulate the metal. The clips on the Amazon-supplied cases are black and look like stiff plastic of some kind, but, in fact, they are stamped steel, painted black.
They stick into little slots on the side of the Kindle. This seems like a clever arrangement, but Amazon seems to have messed up the tolerances between the internal circuit board and the retaining clips on the cases. Metal clip whacks into sensitive part of the Kindle innards, and all hell breaks loose.
This is basic stuff, and it looks like Amazon is showing its lack of manufacturing experience, although, to be fair, they're not the only electronics maker who's screwed up cases and other mechanical parts.
Everything manufactured has to be made to some set of physical tolerances. Making sure it all will fit together and work is one of the reasons people become mechanical engineers. It's also one of the reasons you might want to think twice about subbing out what you think are unimportant components to the cheapest manufacturer in some third world hellhole. I know about this from personal experience.
You're selling the whole thing to people, and the crappiest part can, and usually will, bite you in the ass.
We've got a Fire. Pretty cool. Takes a lot of abuse from the kids and has lasted nearly two months.
Heh.
Hey, that's a long time at my house.
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