Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Reading Comprehension

My Kindle began acting weirdly on a recent trip. The screensaver stayed on when I tried to wake it up, it even stayed on when I turned the power completely off.

When I got back home, I contacted Amazon support about this. My message to them was almost exactly what is in bold above. This was their reply:

Hello from Amazon.com.

Thank you for writing to us about the problem you're having with your Kindle screen.

The flash you see when you turn the page is a normal part of the display refresh process. Kindle uses an electronic ink display that has a slightly longer refresh time than back-lit displays but uses less battery power.

Please check to make sure your battery is fully charged or that your Kindle is plugged in using the power adapter. If your Kindle is low on power, the screen may not refresh properly.

If your Kindle rests on one screen for an extended period of time, you may experience ghosting. Often, paging back and forth through a book or the selections on your home screen will help refresh the display.

You may also wish to restart your Kindle to fully refresh the screen:

1. Press the Home key to visit Kindle's Home screen
2. Select "Settings" from the Home screen menu
3. Select "Restart" from the Settings menu

Or you may simply power the Kindle off for 5 minutes.

If this problem persists, please contact us for hardware support at 1-866-321-8851 so we can better determine how to assist you.

Thank you for using Kindle and for shopping at Amazon.com.

Few things make me angrier than being spoken to as if I were stupid. I never questioned the "flash" of "ghosting" and I don't believe that the screen continuing to show a screensaver when the power is completely off is normal.

I told them I couldn't wake it up when it was on so I don't know how they expected me to follow their instructions to refresh the screen. Turning the power off wasn't going to solve anything. I had turned the power off, that's how I knew that the screensaver stayed on even when there was no power.

Clearly they either didn't really read the message I sent describing the problem or it's a rare enough one that they assume since they hadn't heard of this before, I'm too stupid to know what is really happening.

The Kindle is working fine now. I plugged it into the charger and it fixed the problem. I'm glad it took care of it but don't understand why it would. I charged it up fully before the trip, didn't use it for more than a couple of hours, and it still showed a full charge the last time I looked at the screen before it froze up.

It did have one other problem before the screen freeze. Although I know I was in a Sprint area (my phone worked) the Kindle was telling me that it couldn't connect to the store. I went into the "settings" section, didn't change anything, and then it was able to connect.

My son downloaded a book and a couple of samples, read a bit, and then the next time we looked at it, the screen was frozen.

This is the first time since I got the Kindle in early December that I have had any problem at all with it and even now, my biggest complaint is not with the Kindle but with the way their support person ignored what I said was the problem and talked to me as if I didn't know what was going on right in front of me.