[meneer]

I bought a Kobo Touch to take books on my trip to India. Though 3 weeks ago and 10 days into my trip, my Kobo froze. I used it mostly for reading and occasionally for browsing the internet/checking email. The day it broke, I spent about 20 minutes online and a few hours reading. When I wanted to continue reading later that day, I noticed the screen was frozen on the 'sleep mode', and it has been since. Physically, nothing happened to the kobo: it was always in a protective case didn't get exposed to heat, shocks, magnetic field, water ...

The screen is displaying the cover of the book I was reading but the right 60% of the image has a darker overlay and there are white horizontal lines on the lower half of the screen. Ironically, I was reading Steve Jobs' biography so mr Jobs now intensely stares at me through e-ink noise, as if he's telling me that I should have taken my ipad...

Over the 3 weeks I have now been dragging around a broken Kobo through India, these lines occasionally change a little: more white horizontal lines, more black dither. The screen however does not come out of 'sleep mode', whatever I try.

Initially, when I tried to switch it on and off, the led on top would go blue and flash green for a few seconds after. The screen however didn't react.

I have tried a basic reset (pushing the button under the pinhole in the back) as well as a factory reset (through holding the home button and sliding the power button until I saw a red light + white flashing light). The basic reset sometimes results in the same blue led followed by a few seconds of flashing green. The factory reset worked because when I connect the reader to a computer, I can see that all my books are gone. None of them however, change the frozen screen ...

I have spent a lot of time and money in internet cafes attempting to resolve this. A few times, I downloaded and installed the Kobo program (about an hour on slow internet) and waited (about another hour) while that program syncs and downloads undefined content and updates, only to find out that at the end of that, there's some sort of error (can't connect to my Kobo touch, internet connection drops for a few seconds and Kobo program needs to start from scratch...)

Not having my books and travel guide on my e-reader is seriously frustrating. The experience of finding information on the Kobo website or dealing with their help-desk is ever more frustrating. Their website doesn't do much more than explain toddlers how to read their ebooks. It doesn't tell me what the green flashing led means. (At least, I can't find it) The helpdesk advices me to restart the device or maybe try a different usb port. They seem to struggle reading the email in wich I describe the problem.

Anyone had a similar problem? Is this a hardware issue and should I stop trying to bring my Kobo touch back to life? Does anyone know what it means when the top led is solid blue for a 2 seconds and than flashes green for 5 seconds?

Things can occasionally fail but this lack of support makes it ever more frustrating. So if anyone is reading this to figure out of they should buy a Kobo, I can only say that I wish I bought a Kindle to take on my trip...