[gca3020]

Originally Posted by OakIris

O.K., so I commandeered the Kindle from my partner to check it out further. After hitting the "Alt-G" key combo several times, the "permanent" ghosting has gone away. Now when the Kindle is off, nothing is showing but a blank screen. Again, I had no idea that ghosting would remain even when the eReader was off. Sorry about my "the sky is falling" reaction. I bow to all of you knowledgeable folks. Let this be a lesson to me (and anyone else) for jumping to unwarranted conclusions.

(My partner probably won't even notice the difference, but the "alt-g" mantra is now permanently embedded in my brain. )

Holly

I think the main point of contention here is that you weren't aware that the eInk screens need no power at all to refresh them. This is why the battery life is so incredible on e-readers, power is only used when pages are turned, and no power is needed to maintain the image on the page. In units without WiFi and/or 3G enabled. In fact, many readers measure battery life in page turns rather than days or weeks (e.g. 5,000 page turns rather than 10 days).

This is also why amazon displays the "screensaver" when the unit falls asleep. Imagine if they didn't do anything and just left the last page up on the screen. People would try to change the page and find that the page turn buttons weren't working, but would have no other indication of power being off. People would assume the unit had locked up and customer service would see lots of angry phone calls.

So basically, no, the screen can't suffer any permanent burn-in, but you will see some latent afterimages when the screen is not fully refreshed, even if power is removed.

Glad you ended up getting it all worked out with a few manual refreshes.