My Sony Reader screen has gone all garbled and is seemingly unfixable. I searched around and found this
Kindle Screen Woes blog post and this
Mysterious Broken Screen thread on these forums. It can be confirmed now that this is not an isolated incident. Interestingly enough, this problem is not exclusive to any single reader. Including my Sony, there are now at least three accounts of this screen problem on three different e-ink devices. This seems to be a current shortcoming of e-ink devices and I will be a bit upset if Sony does nothing to help me out. Before I go on, here's a photo of my Sony Reader:
I had seen it do this before, but it was always fine after being recharged and turned back on. Recharging didn't work this time. I had left it alone for well over a month while I was out to sea with the US Navy. It's not that I couldn't recharge it but I didn't want to bother with it because I was enjoying some good paperbacks and there are few outlets on the ship. So I left my Reader alone and when we pulled back into port I charged it up at the barracks. No luck.
I'm flustered and I'm jaded with e-ink technology. I've only had the Reader since October, so it hasn't even lasted me a year. That $280 is a big investment for me to not have the device last even one full year. If Sony does nothing to help me, I want to get a Kindle. I've been looking for an excuse to get one for some time but have my device break was not what I had in mind. I'm really hoping I can work something out with Sony. But if I have to drop money on a new Reader, it will be a Kindle. I hear Amazon is pretty helpful with these types of situations. Unfortunately, I don't even know if I really want to stick with e-ink this early in its development. It seems pretty unstable right now.
So how about you guys? If any of you have run into this problem and actually found some kind of fix it would be great for you to share! I'm not holding my breath but, as I said, I'm pretty upset.