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Prash · 09-14-2012, 04:14 PM

Hi all,

(It's been a while since I posted here, but I have been a frequent visitor because of a strange, indescribable pull towards MR) I'll just get to the question right away.

My brother in law bought a K3 Wifi a year ago, and it froze after about three months of usage. He had a few calls with Amazon support, and had their assistance to get it fixed, but it did not help. By the way, this K3 was bought on ebay India through a reseller who bought it first in the US, so it was not directly bought from Amazon website. As the Kindle could not be made to work again even after the Amazon support group tried different things over phone, they sent him a replacement K3 Wifi without asking back the frozen one. I had seen the frozen K3 then, and it just didn't respond to anything - reset through the slide button, charging for several hours etc. I didn't bother about trying to open it up and look inside, as I barely knew anything about Kindle then.

I was surprised that Amazon did not ask it back, as I thought one would usually have to send a device back first to get a replacement. The return costs from India to US would have been almost the price of Kindle itself, but that's another matter.

Fast forward one year to 2012, Tuesday, September the 4th. I bumped into an article about unbricking a K3. This one to be exact. I was couple of days away from buying a new PRS 350 from ebay which was going to be my first eink reader, but as I bumped into this article I thought of giving it a try. I couldn't possibly do more harm if I hacked it, and it has been painful (for me) to see an unused K3 lying in an old box, frozen and cold without a future. So I took it from my brother in law right away and got down to work.

And, after the experiment and a really long charging session which lasted about 6 hours, I was looking at the screen which said if I wanted to use it while charging, I should disconnect it from the PC. There, the story of my first real ereader.

Offtopic:

Spoiler:

I had also done a factory reset after the battery-removal reset to make sure the default firmware loads again, and now the device doesn't show any registration info. My brother in law had registered the replacement K3 on his Amazon account as soon as he had received it. My question is, can I register this Kindle on Amazon under my name? Or can I atleast use the web browser? I am a bit paranoid and I am thinking if I do register the old K3 or use Wifi on the device, Amazon might block both the K3s - as the first one was supposed to be bricked/dead/never used again? Or am I being too paranoid? Please advise if using it would be acceptable.

I am thinking about emailing Amazon and ask them what to do. But first I will ask my brother in law to dig up his old emails and see if they have shared any usage policy for the frozen kindle. I hope I am not going over the top with this, so please share your opinion. And I apologize about my extremely long post if it made you sleepy/bored, couldn't keep it short.

Thanks,
prash

09-14-2012, 04:14 PM	#1
Prash Zealot Posts: 102 Karma: 387 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Bangalore, India Device: K3W, LG OG-E970, Utopia Apad	K3 registration rights / usage question Hi all, (It's been a while since I posted here, but I have been a frequent visitor because of a strange, indescribable pull towards MR) I'll just get to the question right away. My brother in law bought a K3 Wifi a year ago, and it froze after about three months of usage. He had a few calls with Amazon support, and had their assistance to get it fixed, but it did not help. By the way, this K3 was bought on ebay India through a reseller who bought it first in the US, so it was not directly bought from Amazon website. As the Kindle could not be made to work again even after the Amazon support group tried different things over phone, they sent him a replacement K3 Wifi without asking back the frozen one. I had seen the frozen K3 then, and it just didn't respond to anything - reset through the slide button, charging for several hours etc. I didn't bother about trying to open it up and look inside, as I barely knew anything about Kindle then. I was surprised that Amazon did not ask it back, as I thought one would usually have to send a device back first to get a replacement. The return costs from India to US would have been almost the price of Kindle itself, but that's another matter. Fast forward one year to 2012, Tuesday, September the 4th. I bumped into an article about unbricking a K3. This one to be exact. I was couple of days away from buying a new PRS 350 from ebay which was going to be my first eink reader, but as I bumped into this article I thought of giving it a try. I couldn't possibly do more harm if I hacked it, and it has been painful (for me) to see an unused K3 lying in an old box, frozen and cold without a future. So I took it from my brother in law right away and got down to work. And, after the experiment and a really long charging session which lasted about 6 hours, I was looking at the screen which said if I wanted to use it while charging, I should disconnect it from the PC. There, the story of my first real ereader. Offtopic: Spoiler: Though I have been a frequent MR visitor, I didn't knew much about Kindle platform. I always thought it is a completely closed device, without sensible features and utilities which can be found in Sony readers. How wrong I was - and the K3 hacks page on MR simply blew me away. Everyday since last Tuesday has been a crazy ride, and a reading marathon. I started from an iPaq, then a cheap Chinese tablet which I still use. But this one is leaps ahead when it comes down to pure reading. My overall efficiency has improved a lot as I can read almost everywhere with minimal discomfort. I am entering a totally different topic here, so I'll reserve more praise and opinion for a different thread. I had also done a factory reset after the battery-removal reset to make sure the default firmware loads again, and now the device doesn't show any registration info. My brother in law had registered the replacement K3 on his Amazon account as soon as he had received it. My question is, can I register this Kindle on Amazon under my name? Or can I atleast use the web browser? I am a bit paranoid and I am thinking if I do register the old K3 or use Wifi on the device, Amazon might block both the K3s - as the first one was supposed to be bricked/dead/never used again? Or am I being too paranoid? Please advise if using it would be acceptable. I am thinking about emailing Amazon and ask them what to do. But first I will ask my brother in law to dig up his old emails and see if they have shared any usage policy for the frozen kindle. I hope I am not going over the top with this, so please share your opinion. And I apologize about my extremely long post if it made you sleepy/bored, couldn't keep it short. Thanks, prash