Amazon's Kindle

[Griffin NoName]

That's a lot of Kindles in such a short space of time (5 years). Will it end up evolving (through intelligent design) into a tablet PC?

It already has, it's called the Kindle Fire.

I'm more interested in Pebbles

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I'm more interested in Pebbles

I saw that demonstrated somewhere or other.  If I only wore a watch.... (skin doesn't take kindly to wristwatches)

[Griffin NoName]

My skin doesn't either. But I construct patches made from masking tape and tissue paper (surprisingly hard-wearing), cut them to the shape of the watch back, and attach them to the back of the watch. This stops my skin reacting, and also stops the horrible smell that accompanies my skin reaction.

Back to Kindles. I already love my Kindle. Even tho all i have on it is the Guardian - daily - v.v.quick download.

The only puzzle is, they say with wireless off the battery lasts about 2 months between charges. My battery is half used up (I fully charged it on receipt) and I don't keep wireless on and all Ive used it for each day is to read the Guardian, then switch right off - I don't keep it on screensaver. So bit of a puzzle why battery usage already down to half.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I wouldn't worry, re: battery-- cellular modems (which is what you are using, daily) does suck down quite a bit'o battery-juice.

1/2 down already sounds pretty normal to me.

[Griffin NoName]

I'm using it on wi-fi.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Just as bad as a cellular modem-- those wireless radios pretty much do a continuous-communication thing, whilst they are on.

[Roland Deschain]

It already has, it's called the Kindle Fire.

So it's a little like the iPad, then. Or pretty much like it, from what I read just now.

I'm more interested in Pebbles

So we surpass Star Trek's vision in some ways, yet only just catching up to Dick Tracy in others? Lol. Neat idea, though.

[The Meromorph]

Kindles do a lot of background processing (mostly building massive word search indices) in the first week or two. This dramatically increases battery usage at first, but it soon tails off and achieves the touted battery life.
I recommend de-fragging (plug it into your PC) the Kindle after a couple of weeks, and then every few months. 'Defraggler' (free) from PIRIFORM seems to do the best job on the Kindle.
http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

[Griffin NoName]

Wow! Mero you are a mine of information....... I am re-assured re battery and have downloaded defraggler - Thanks.

[Griffin NoName]

I've been having problems with my Kindle. It has not been responding to touch, either by finger or stylus, even thumps! Battery was showing about 1/4 full. So I recharged it, plugged into my laptop. Hibernated my laptop. Laptop then refused to restart until I unplugged the Kindle. Wierd. Anyone had this?

Then when I tried the Kindle (charged) I got Application Error. Did a hard reset. Got Application Error. Thumped it  a few more times. As one does. Seemed to recover itself. Anyone had this?

At some point amongst all this I was looking at the directory structure on windows explorer. Inadvertantly I think I moved something. So I moved what I thought I'd moved back to where I thought it should be. Did a google for what the directory structure should look for, but no dice. Can someone verify (assuming all Kindles have same directory structure which they may no have) that ::::

/kindle/tts/data/common

contains two directories:

high-quality
low-quality

??

[Roland Deschain]

Sorry to hear of your problems with the Kindle. I don't know what's going on there, nor do I have any knowledge of the file system. This is what i've found on it:-

http://www.mobileread.mobi/forums/showthread.php?t=162062
http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php?topic=57855.0

The second link is to a forum which may provide further answers. Hope this helps.

[Griffin NoName]

Thanks for links. The first one showed I repaired my kindle structure incorrectly.

Can someone verify (assuming all Kindles have same directory structure which they may no have) that ::::

/kindle/tts/data/common

contains two directories:

high-quality
low-quality

??

The above is wrong.

all three directories are subfolders of tts/data. ie. high-quality and low-quality are in tts/data not common.

Apparently these are used in book-> speech. So they won't have affected me as i havent been using speech.

Only prob. now is the Kindle is still getting stuck occasionally.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Try doing a cold-restart.

I don't know how the Touch does that, but on mine, you hold the power-off key for more than 15 seconds-- your manual should tell you how to do a cold-restart.

I find that cures quite a few things that just letting it sleep won't fix.

[Griffin NoName]

Try doing a cold-restart.

I don't know how the Touch does that, but on mine, you hold the power-off key for more than 15 seconds-- your manual should tell you how to do a cold-restart.

I find that cures quite a few things that just letting it sleep won't fix.

I always switch my Kindle off completely when not in use. - ie. never leave it on screen saver. To do this I press and hold the power key for about 3 or 4 seconds. The screen goes sort empty like before I ever switched it on the first time Is that cold enough? Or would 15 seconds be colder?

Got stuck again today, and another application error. Going to check out the forums. Good thing it's warranty is a year............. Bit fed up. My prescious.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Shut off an cold boot are not the same thing, I'm told... a cold reset refreshes various memory caches and stuff, that a simple turn-off does not.

Or so I'm told.