Comments on: Washington Post on Kindle: Screen problems, ‘often-awkward interface,’ lockup, wireless issues, but ‘you can get lost in a compelling book’

By: Jon Jermey

Jon Jermey — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:00:20 +0000

Since when has your p-book frozen up?

A few years ago I bought a second-hand detective story paperback, read it through with mounting interest, got to the second-last chapter — and discovered the rest was missing. Does that count as a freeze-up?

I’ve also owned pbooks in which chapters were out of sync, single pages missing and whole chunks bound upside-down. Tight binding which cracks the book when it first opens is commonplace (planned obsolescence, perhaps?)

Technical flaws are not confined to electronic media.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:26:47 +0000

Nate: Thanks. Sounds like a likely explanation. Of course, Amazon would do well to make that clear in a quick start guide or whatever. Notice? Even the Amazon tech support guy didn’t have an answer. For all practical purposes, it might as well have been a freeze, even if it wasn’t. Happy holidays. David

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:22:46 +0000

LC and Brian: Well, keep us posted—especially on the positives of the Kindle (in the interest of balance). You can use this thread if you’d like. If you have tips to share for fellow owners, please do so! Thanks. David

By: Nate the great

Nate the great — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:09:58 +0000

The screen only draws power when it is being refreshed. If it is not being refreshed, the screen will not change. His Kindle didn’t freeze. The battery died.

By: LC

LC — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:46:19 +0000

Brian-

Are you talking about using the cover while reading? I don’t use it for that, since I don’t consider it a secure fit like the Sony reader. I consider it more a protective case and only use it when I am putting it away.

When your unit froze up, was it when you connected it to a pc or did it happen while using the book independent? Let’s hope that Amazon is working on a fix for this soon.

By: Brian Carnell

Brian Carnell — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:31:23 +0000

I’ve seen the freezeup a few times, including where the reset button wouldn’t work. Yes, I was able to solve this by plugging it in — the problem was when it froze I wasn’t anywhere near either of the two charging cords I’ve got for it. I expect my Win Mobile to freeze up occasionally when I load a bunch of third party software on there. No reason at all a single purpose device with all the code written by Amazon should lock up. I’ve *never* seen the RocketBook I grabbed from Fictionwise freeze up.

What’s annoying about the buttons is that if you close the cover they ship with it, it will push the buttons for you. So you have to remember to put the Kindle in a special suspend mode. Ugh.

The Kindle…its the worst dedicated ebook reader…except all the other ones.

By: LC

LC — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 22:23:11 +0000

I have had my Kindle for 2 days now. I have not put it to extensive use, but I did buy an issue of the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal and read them both without any freezing or hangups.

I also browsed some web pages and for the most part, they looked pretty good and loaded fairly quickly. I searched the store as well and purchased a book. No problems there.

I agree with the issue many have about accidental page turns due to the large buttons on both sides of the device. I am hoping a firmware update in the future will give us the ability to choose left or right handed reading that will disable the buttons on the side we hold.

So far I haven’t needed to recharge it. Then again, I only turn the wireless on when I need to make a purchase or the one occasion I browsed the web.