17th June 2022 - Dead Kindle
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Written while watching/listening to the one day cricket match between
England and Netherlands.
My Kindle died on Monday. Well the screen has. I went to awaken it and
weird lines appeared on the screen. Having attempted to reset it, the
screen remains stuck on the screensaver with weird lines. Sigh. The
backlight still turns on so I guess it is alive with no output method.
It annoyed me in not working. However, it turns out I bought it in
2013. 9 years of life is pretty good really. I have ended up replacing
it with another paperwhite. I know that walled gardens are rubbish
etc but I find the Kindle a great device and it encourages me to read
more. Not with annoying reminders or anything but just by being easy
to carry, having a light and not hurting too much when it falls on my
face as the eyes fail to stay open. There are other eink readers but
they tend to be hard to buy in the UK. With calibre, I know I can own
these books and I can buy from other sources. Yes it hurts knowing I
am supporting Amazon but there are battles to pick. It does help they
offer ebooks for 99p in some daily offer affair. That is the prime
cause for my large to read list.
I was considering other eink devices but kept hitting the issue of
high cost for low confidence in reliability or high import taxes. The
Onyx series were tempting but have the issue of running Android and I
do not have the confidence that the version will be updated. I suspect
the software would lead to my retiring the device rather than hardware
failures. The other options all seem to be Chinese manufacturers. This
makes me nervous as I would have to buy from China and the cost to
risk seems undesirable. This is the risk of a faulty device and trying
to return it. There are some eink phones which have been tempting too.
Perhaps with colour eink we shall see more manufacturers trying to
enter the market.
Now, can I replace the screen for relatively cheap and have a device
to play with as a terminal? I would like an eink terminal for use with
SDF in many ways. Time to see if I can get a screen for less than
£0!
