[Leaping Gnome]

We went and got the 2nd Reader today at the local Borders. When at the store waiting to pay they handed us one from behind the counter (there was no display but I had spied the boxes on a shelf back there during a previous visit). I noticed the box was a little mangled and mentioned it to my girlfriend but told her it was hers and she could take it or ask for another one, whatever she wanted. The cashier said all the boxes looked like that due to poor Sony shipping (uh huh). We went ahead and bought that one but when we got out to the car I had her take it out of the box and turn it on. Sure enough, it had been used, it only had two battery bars left and it was sitting on the 14th page of one of the sample books. Great.

She went back in and exchanged it while I waited in the car. The manager gave her some grief but gave her another one, she turned it on in the store and confirmed it came on with the "Starting up..." page before accepting it. The manager claimed it couldn't possibly be used because they hadn't had any returned at that store, so I can only assume an employee "borrowed" it.

Anyway, we got it home and installed Connect on her laptop and hooked it up. It crashed. The screen went weird, it got black lines in spots all around the outside edges of the screen and the Sony name that usually shows on the bottom when connected was all mangled. The Connect software recognized it for a split second and then it disappeared from the menu. We unplugged it and let it wall charge for a few hours and then tried again and it was fine. Kind of scary out of the box experience though.

On the second hookup it authorized fine and we were able to download all the previous purchases to the new Reader. No $50 credit though, still bummed about that.