[jmaynard]

I prefer reading on the Voyage to my previous PW but am irritated (again) that I cannot have pictures of my grandkids as screensavers.

So i wrote to Jeff Bezos (and a couple of other Amazon CEOs - not including the CEO of Kindle who is the only one not to publish an email address!) with my frustration and asked why the end user cannot upload screensaver pictures.

I did not get a written response but did get a phone call from an 'Executive Assistant' - we had a pleasant chat...

He explained that Amazon's reason for not allowing user screensavers is related to the cheaper ad-based versions of the various Kindles. I gave him a potted CV (50 years in computing) and told him that maintaining the ad-display facility alongside user screensavers was a trivial software issue and sounded like an excuse rather than a reason (he didn't argue with that).

I do appreciate that Amazon wants to retain control over the display of ads for those who have the cheaper version but keeping that alongside user screensaver images cannot be beyond the capability of Amazon developers (can it??).

I have a different theory: I think that someone senior in the development team sees it as a personal challenge to defeat the hackers and show that he (or she) is better...

I shared this theory with the EA - he chose not to discuss it with me but noted my point that not allowing user screensavers goes against all of the good stuff Amazon totes about its customer service just about everywhere (and its customer service, with this one exception, is in my experience very good indeed).

We also discussed the use of jailbreaking on earlier models and it was clear he had never seen a Kindle with other than Amazon screensavers.

I was finally assured that the issue of user screensavers was well know to Amazon and was under constant review. Despite the friendliness of the telephone conversation I was left feeling that I will have to put up with the Amazon screensavers for some time...

Shame on you, Amazon!