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Amazon Kindle |OT| of eInk superiority

Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
Not with todays book.
True.

Also, I don't know if anyone else has had this issue but the charging cable that came with my 2nd Gen Kindle started to disintegrate. The insulated coated around the cable just started to flake off. I sent an e-mail to Amazon customer service and they gave me credit + shipping credit for a new one, no problem. The thing is like 2 years old by now too. Pretty nice of them.
 

Manics

Banned
Was bothering me too much. Went to Staples and exchanged it. This was a gift for my sister so I didn't want the power switch to be sticky. The new one is perfect. Funny I bought the thing in Toronto and exchanged it in Victoria. Good thing Staples lets you exchange in any store.
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
Manics said:
Anyone have a "sticky" power switch? Just bought a Kindle for my sister and her switch sort of sticks. Mine is nice and loose.

Both mine and my wife's do that. I noticed its more pronounced when its in a case, so I wonder if its actually the case compressing it a bit in the bottom corner and addicng friction tot he switch.
 

AlexMogil

Member
Aquavelvaman said:
True.

Also, I don't know if anyone else has had this issue but the charging cable that came with my 2nd Gen Kindle started to disintegrate. The insulated coated around the cable just started to flake off. I sent an e-mail to Amazon customer service and they gave me credit + shipping credit for a new one, no problem. The thing is like 2 years old by now too. Pretty nice of them.

It just happened to me. Mine was laying by my bed and I had been using it for quite a while. I picked it up and it just... ceased to exist. Disintegrated and faded away leaving the usb and cable wrap. Weird.
 
Kindle has a cool new feature called @author.
F9qlc.png

@author is new feature in a limited beta release on Kindle and Amazon Author Pages that connects readers with their favorite writers and their books. It's easy: Readers can ask questions directly from their Kindles, or post them to Amazon Author Pages. Anyone who has purchased items from Amazon.com can reply to an existing question or ask a new one, and all visitors to Amazon.com can read any current question or response.
Amazon.com said:
How Do I Ask a Question?
Posting a question from the Kindle:
1. Place the cursor at the beginning of the passage you'd like to ask a question about using the 5-way controller, then press down to anchor it
2. Highlight the passage using the 5-way controller
3. Enter your question about the passage you highlighted, beginning with the phrase "@author". Please note that questions asked from the Kindle are limited to 100 characters. If you would like to ask a longer question, feel free to ask the question from the Amazon Author Page.
4. Select "save & share" from the options at the bottom of the note window when finished

If you don't have a Twitter account associated with your Amazon.com account, you'll have the option to press Alt + Enter to manage your social network registration before your message is posted. You can read more about posting to Twitter on our Help pages.
 

Angst

Member
Amazon's CS is fucking amazing!

I had a slight accident on Monday where I took a fall while trekking and ended up breaking my Kindle's screen. I immediately ordered a new Kindle thinking I couldn't live without it. At the same time I sent a mail to Amazon customer service explaining what had happened and if thought I could fix it somehow.

Later the same day they emailed me back asking if I could give them a call, I called them and they offered to replace my broken Kindle for $40 + postage! Of course I agreed immediately. To me this is way beyond what I expected of them - it's one thing to get a replacement for an out of warranty item when the issue has something to do with build quality (ie YLOD PS3, red ring xbox) and something extraordinary when it has to do with my stupidity / clumsiness and nothing to do with Amazon. I even told them that I already had made an order for a Kindle 3.

Only thing is that now I have two Kindles in the mail... guess I have to return the Kindle 3.
 

Jintor

Member
Oh fuck, my screen's gone loco again. Little splotch on the screen when I woke up this morning, now random lines and shapes all over the damn place when I plugged it into my PC. It was in my bag without protective padding on a night out and, well, I don't recall hitting it on anything or stuff, but...

I already had my last Kindle replaced for a screen problem, liklihood of being able to do it again?
 

Angst

Member
Jintor said:
Oh fuck, my screen's gone loco again. Little splotch on the screen when I woke up this morning, now random lines and shapes all over the damn place when I plugged it into my PC. It was in my bag without protective padding on a night out and, well, I don't recall hitting it on anything or stuff, but...

I already had my last Kindle replaced for a screen problem, liklihood of being able to do it again?
Probably 100 %.
 
D

Deleted member 1235

Unconfirmed Member
Jintor said:
Oh fuck, my screen's gone loco again. Little splotch on the screen when I woke up this morning, now random lines and shapes all over the damn place when I plugged it into my PC. It was in my bag without protective padding on a night out and, well, I don't recall hitting it on anything or stuff, but...

I already had my last Kindle replaced for a screen problem, liklihood of being able to do it again?
Kindle support is brilliant. call them.

My girlfriend woke up and used the kindle screen as support while pushing herself out of bed and cracked it all beyond repair, she called them and they said 'well, it was your own fault and that's not covered, but we will sell you one for half price'

that's awesome.
 

Jintor

Member
Well

Broke it somehow on Thursday, called Kindle support on Saturday, new Kindle was here... by Monday.

Bravo, Amazon. Bra-fucking-vo. Now I gotta figure out how to get this broken one back to them, probably gotta use the box they sent me.
 

daw840

Member
Just got one of these for my wife. Any recommendations for the free books? She's not very computer literate and I don't really read much so I don't know which of these books are worth a shit.
 

Number45

Member
daw840 said:
Just got one of these for my wife. Any recommendations for the free books? She's not very computer literate and I don't really read much so I don't know which of these books are worth a shit.
Check out this page (.co.uk - I'm sure .com has the same) for a long list of free classic books for the device.
 

`Moe Joe.

Banned
How do PDF's fare; do they at least look true to form?

Thinking about getting a kindle but I don't want to read tet which is out of whack and format.
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
It works well. As long as the PDF is well formatted. It messes up with some image laden PDFs though. BUt for plain articles, no issues.

Easiest though is to use Calibre to convert pdfs to mobi, then even images work perfectly.
 

Enco

Member
`Moe Joe. said:
How do PDF's fare on the ebook; do they at least look true to form?

Thinking about getting a kindle but I don't want to read tet which is out of whack and format.
That'll be the main reason for me getting a kindle too.

Thinking about picking one up in the next week or so.
 

Blackhead

Redarse
`Moe Joe. said:
True. I'll just be reading journal articles like... Not really fussed on the pictures as it's e-ink.
*shrug* from the linked thread

FlyinJ said:
I've tried to view about 5 different PDFs on my Kindle 3 3G since buying it a few weeks ago.

The Civ5 manual worked, and worked quite well.

Fallout: NV's manual hung the device on trying to load.

I tried reading two book PDFs on it, both hung the device.

The third book I tried loaded the PDF, but the text was far too small. Trying to scale the text to 150% or higher would hang the device.

I had to do a hard reset on the Kindle every time it hung as well, which takes about 10 minutes.

So, yeah, it SUCKS for PDFs.

Also, these PDFs were between 5-10mb. The Civ5 manual was the largest, and strangely was the only one that actually worked.
FlyinJ said:
firehawk12 said:
Did you try converting them using Calibre?
Yeah, it made them unreadable messes. Missing line breaks, formatting errors, weird symbols everywhere.
If you do decide to go ahead make sure to post your impressions (Calibre has gotten many updates since then and might be much improved).
 

Double D

Member
I'm about to buy a kindle for my wife's b-day. I was going to get her the $139 Wifi only, but notice I can get one with 3G for the same price only it's the 'special offers' model. Is the only difference with the special offers model the screensavers? Any way to put the custom screen savers on it?
 

Verdre

Unconfirmed Member
Vik_Vaughn said:
I'm about to buy a kindle for my wife's b-day. I was going to get her the $139 Wifi only, but notice I can get one with 3G for the same price only it's the 'special offers' model. Is the only difference with the special offers model the screensavers? Any way to put the custom screen savers on it?

The ad screensaver and this are the difference:
so-dp-homepage._V181472894_.jpg


And yes there are ways to get rid of the ads, but you'd have to dig and most of the kindle hack community is pretty against it. (For good reason)
 

Enco

Member
Hmm with this pdf news I might go with the Nook touch.

I know this is the Kindle thread but do you guys have any opinions on the Nook?
 

Enco

Member
Greyface said:
Have you considered the Kindle DX?
It's not here in the UK as far as I'm aware and I don't want to spend that much money.

Hmm.. the kindle can get rss feeds sent to it.

The Nook looks better and the page turns are much nicer. The Kindle has more features. This is a pretty tough choice.
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
`Moe Joe. said:
True. I'll just be reading journal articles like... Not really fussed on the pictures as it's e-ink.

Then its fine. My wife loads up journal articles and no issues. Its tricky formatted PDFs that cause issues, stuff with background graphics, inline pictures and so forth. But standard PDFs are just fine after Calibre gets through with them.
 

Enco

Member
VistraNorrez said:
There will probably be a new Kindle soon, If you can wait.
I thought I read somewhere that Amazon aren't making a new e ink reader any time soon and are focusing on the Kindle 4 tablet? I don't want an lcd screen.

I just read that the Nook isn't available in the UK? Well that makes my decision a bit easier.
 
Enco said:
Hmm with this pdf news I might go with the Nook touch.

I know this is the Kindle thread but do you guys have any opinions on the Nook?
I thought the Nook was US only(Edit: looks up..ah). If your going to be reading a lot of pdfs consider the Kobo touch reader or the new Sony. Both have the pinch to zoom feature that (unless it's been updated in firmware) the Nook touch lacks.
 

Enco

Member
HiroProtagonist said:
I thought the Nook was US only(Edit: looks up..ah). If your going to be reading a lot of pdfs consider the Kobo touch reader or the new Sony. Both have the pinch to zoom feature that (unless it's been updated in firmware) the Nook touch lacks.
Had a look at the Sony but I hate the design.

I think I'll stick with the Kindle. The PDFs I want are mainly text anyway so they shouldn't be a big issue. The refresh to black kinda sucks but I can get used to it.
 
Enco said:
I thought I read somewhere that Amazon aren't making a new e ink reader any time soon and are focusing on the Kindle 4 tablet? I don't want an lcd screen.

I just read that the Nook isn't available in the UK? Well that makes my decision a bit easier.
The same rumors that initially pegged the tablet also said new e-ink readers were coming. Not to mention Amazon has put up refurbished models of the current Kindle. That is a good indication of a new model coming soon.
 

Enco

Member
VistraNorrez said:
The same rumors that initially pegged the tablet also said new e-ink readers were coming. Not to mention Amazon has put up refurbished models of the current Kindle. That is a good indication of a new model coming soon.
One source said it doesn’t seem likely that Amazon is going to release a touch-screen e-ink Kindle, like the new Nook, anytime soon.
Source

Obviously not confirmed. Wish they would just say.
 

Wurst

Member
I'd love to jump on the eReader train myself but I'm sadly living in Germany, which is apparently an eReader developing country..

Even if Amazon announced the Kindle 4 eInk Reader it wouldn't be available in Europe till mid 2012 anyway, right? :S
 

Blackhead

Redarse
Wurst said:
I'd love to jump on the eReader train myself but I'm sadly living in Germany, which is apparently an eReader developing country..

Even if Amazon announced the Kindle 4 eInk Reader it wouldn't be available in Europe till mid 2012 anyway, right? :S
You're in luck: Kobo just announced that they'll be selling the Kobo Touch in Germany come Oct 1st. They already have a german ebook store up and running. imo the Kobo Touch is the best ereader available right now (although I've sold mine now that i have an iPad).
 
Enco said:
I thought I read somewhere that Amazon aren't making a new e ink reader any time soon and are focusing on the Kindle 4 tablet? I don't want an lcd screen.

I just read that the Nook isn't available in the UK? Well that makes my decision a bit easier.

You can order it from a few different websites in the UK but it costs about £250.
 

Enco

Member
J Tourettes said:
You can order it from a few different websites in the UK but it costs about £250.
Yeesh no thanks.

If it was the same price as the Kindle I may be persuaded but not like that. I'll give it a few weeks to see if anything is announced. If not, I'll get the Kindle 3.
 

Wurst

Member
Greyface said:
You're in luck: Kobo just announced that they'll be selling the Kobo Touch in Germany come Oct 1st. They already have a german ebook store up and running. imo the Kobo Touch is the best ereader available right now (although I've sold mine now that i have an iPad).

Thanks for the heads up!
I dig the layout especially the cover view. Will keep an eye on it.

I really like Amazon as a company, though. I guess I'll wait till October and hope they have something announced by then. At least ePub support for Kindle 3 would be a good start!
 
Enco said:
Yeesh no thanks.

If it was the same price as the Kindle I may be persuaded but not like that. I'll give it a few weeks to see if anything is announced. If not, I'll get the Kindle 3.

I'm in the same boat. Waiting until November to see if a new e-ink Kindle is announced, if not I'll be getting the Kindle 3.
 
So one of the offers on the Kindle with ads is 100 bucks off select HDTVs. Anybody want it?

The offer is valid until 9/13. First person to ask gets the code.
 
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