Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
There's two factors which affect the capacity of lithium battery: number of charge cycles is one, but simple ageing is a more significant one. When a lithium battery is first charged, the clock starts ticking; a 3-year-old battery will typically have lost a third of its original capacity; after 5 years it'll probably be completely dead. Many people with older readers like the Sony PRS-505 or the original Kindle have certainly run into battery issues already.
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Good points Harry. I think most folks really do not understand the way Li-Ion batteries work let alone how to mange them over time. Not our fault though as the device makers just do not try to help us. In fact give most all devices, well the portable kind anyway, are for all intents and purposes, disposable. Granted the Li-Ion batteries live a long time but since removing and replacing a battery is a non-trivial matter, still since these devices are far from "obsolete" once a battery needs replacing it is a shame and a waste of the natural resources many people are trying to conserve when buying a device like an e-reader.
BTW an FYI reminder, remember the K1 has a user replaceable battery. My original K1 is still running just fine with it's original battery. I bought that device when they first were released. I don't own it anymore, gave it to a friend, so I can't do a run-down on the battery but she seems happy with it. Yeeeesh, what did we pay for those original K1's, something around US$465-$495. Wow, saving money was obviously NOT the plan there, huh? hahaha.
I'm still using the 2nd gen Kindle and it too is just fine for my needs. Some day I need to un-font hack it so it can update the firmware to the last version but am in little to zero hurry there.
Well back to watching Catwoman on my KF1 because it's a guilty pleasure and the whole reason I bought a small tablet like the KF. The darn thing plays video far better than my Asus TF300T. But like my ereaders I am not going to blow funds on the new KF HD's even if they are a good tech device. Like my ereaders that original KF works perfectly well and will for a number of years yet.
I think that is the idea the article in the OP is about...do people really need to replace consumption only type devices every time a new iteration of the same theme is released? Heck no, the only thing I see new devices doing is enticing fence sitters into the fold rather than existing users to update the hardware. In-fact I see these devices becoming "free with membership" in less the 3-years when attached to the walled-garden markets like Amazon where the device is pretty much just a "Sears Catalog" (something no household was without in my younger years). I guess I see these things as part of the roadmap to smart-devices everywhere in the home, car and pocket. Maybe on that level the ereader is eventually going the way of the do-do though I just see it as evolving into an even more dedicated delivery system for what we readers need to mainline...we just need some more waterproof devices for the, ahem, "reading-room" & tub.