Just got mine about a month ago, and I love it!
When I got it I made sure to download the latest firmware, and then along came the whole "battery not recharging!" panic. Did a hard reset per instructions I found here, and the problem went away. Drained the battery after using it, rechaged, and I was back to "battery not recharging!" panic again!
No firmware upgrade this time, so I figured I had a bad unit. Luckily I came across the soft-reset trick, and it worked fine after that.
So, love my Reader, but I do have a question. After I installed the firmware, did the hard reset reset the unit back to factory defaults (no update)?