Death of a Kindle - Kathleen Jones

I was recently in Cambodia - which proved more of an endurance test than I'd expected.  What with being ill, my email and Facebook account hacked and having my cash-point card stopped by the fraud unit I didn't get the chance to enjoy it as much as I would have liked.  And when my Kindle froze and died it was the last straw!   Perhaps it just didn't like the heat, or had been through too many airport security scanners.  These days they scan your baggage at every transit point - once as you get off the plane and then again before you board.  Milan to New Zealand via Dubai, Bangkok and Sydney, then NZ to Cambodia via Sydney and Bangkok,  racks up a lot of scanning.  I try to remember to turn it completely off, as advised, but there's always the one time you forget.

It was the classic screen of death - Agatha Christie (a nice touch I thought) with two lines through the middle and an odd fluffy whiteness at the bottom corner.  I tried re-setting it by holding the button across for 30 seconds while plugged into the mains, but it didn't work.  Neither did holding down shift and alt and pressing the R key.  Someone on an internet forum recommended putting it on a hot water bottle and sticking it under the duvet for half an hour, but I didn't think it sensible.  My beloved Kindle is more than 2 years old and I didn't take out an extended warranty, so there's no point in returning it to Amazon.  It's dead.  The relationship is over.

The screen seems to be a bit of a weakness with Kindles.  My partner Neil is on his 4th Kindle in less than 2 years - all supplied on his extended warranty.  Amazon send him a replacement within hours of the death of the old one.  Some of them don't last very long.  We were told by an Amazon rep on the phone line that they don't send new ones - only reconditioned Kindles. So they're more likely to go wrong than the original.

Ever wondered what's inside your Kindle?   Well, since mine is simply going in the waste bin, my resident geek couldn't resist taking it apart to find out.  Here's what it looks like without the cover - a really complicated piece of kit.

That big oblong thing is the battery.

And this seems to be the processor and memory chip.

Underneath the battery there's a plastic cover that hides the screen.  It's pretty flexible and feels like a membrane.

So now I know what's inside, but I've still no idea how they work!  I feel quite sad, because I really liked Kindle 3.  Fortunately, although it was dead, I could still connect it to the computer like a hard drive and take off all the documents and freebie books I'd loaded on.  And the Amazon bought books can be downloaded from the cloud again onto my new Kindle Fire.

Kindle Fire isn't like a Kindle at all - it's a tablet.  You can play games on it, watch the news (it has BBC i-player), surf the internet (with their Silk browser) and almost anything else that distracts you from reading.   But the books look really good.  High Definition screen, full colour, touch screen (complete with fingerprints).  It's awesome! I'm still getting used to everything it can do.  I just hope it proves more reliable than its ancestors. There's only one drawback - it has Solitaire ........

Kathleen Jones blogs at 'A Writer's Life' 
and her new 'E-Single' 'I think . . . I am going to die' (Katherine Mansfield at Fontainebleau) is just published by Bridget Williams Books, New Zealand.
Find out more about Kathleen's books at www.kathleenjones.co.uk
 or check out her Amazon author page.