Thread: Kindle on a bike ride
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Old 07-16-2011, 06:50 PM   #6
j.p.s
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Posts: 5,792
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Device: pb360
Quote:
Originally Posted by Francesco View Post
I've been commuting to work by bike for a couple of years now. In the same period, I've had a Pocketbook 360 and a K3 malfunction and being replaced under warranty and I'm beginning to wonder whether ereaders are built to be carried in the pannier of a bike. I've seen blogs of people touring in their bikes with their Kindles, so they seem to be sturdy enough. It might just be a coincidence that those two readers broke.

Anyway, what do you guys do? I'm thinking to buy a piece of foam to cover the bottom of one of the panniers.
I bicycle to and from work and just about anywhere else almost every day and almost always have an e-reader in one of the panniers. I bought a Kindle 2 in early 2009 and for a little over a year kept it in an oven mitt inside a leather case originally designed for a Toshiba Libretto. That worked very well, but it was less convenient than I would have liked, especially during walking to lunch.

I then bought an Amazon cover, which works well enough, except that I have not found a good way to prevent accidentally opening from the back. I generally put my work clothes in a bag that I put in the pannier and then put the kindle on top of the clothes. Even with bumpy roads and crossing railroad tracks, I think the peak shock to Kindle is less than setting it down on a table.

When I bicycle to lunch on the weekend (almost every weekend), I just put the Kindle (already in the Amazon cover) loose in the empty pannier for a 1 to 3km ride. I have never seen an ill effect from that.

I bought a Pocketbook 360 late last year and started carrying it on my daily commute. At first I put in in the little bubble wrap bag it was shipped in, but soon just put it on top of the clothes in the bag. For biking to lunch, I just put it loose in the pannier with only its supplied cover. A few months ago, I stopped carrying the Kindle 2 and do all my away from home reading on the Pocketbook 360. Carrying a Kindle in an Amazon cover is more convenient than carrying it in an oven mitt in a leather case, but just putting the Pocketbook 360 in a pants pocket or bicycle jersey pocket is even more convenient.

The Kindle never showed any sign of trouble from the two years of bicycling with it in a pannier. The Pocketbook 360 freezes on me during startup or shut down about once per month for no reason that I can tell, and I have to do a reset or disconnect the battery. I disconnect the battery when I have nothing to poke into the little hole for the reset button. Because it goes many days in a row of nearly identical bike rides without problem, I seriously doubt that these freezes have anything to do with the bike ride.

I do think that just about any electronic device over a few dozen grams would not last very long rigidly mounted to a bicycle unless it was specifically built to withstand large numbers of strong shocks.
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