[Hanzar]

Hi, I'm new to the forum. Unfortunately, I'm disappointed with the Kobo ereader, and frustrated because it's so difficult to find them in stores in order to exchange.

I received my Kobo a few days ago and it locked, unresponsive after about 5 minutes of use. After that, there was nothing doing to get it to work again. It wouldn't even respond to a reset. I plugged it in, left it for 6 hours. While it's plugged in, it acts exactly like a USB drive, a very expensive one for the amount of memory you get. The red light came on after abut 20 minutes but never turned off. After the 6 hours, I ejected it and still no response. The screen is frozen with the "Plugged in..." message.

So I tried to leave it unplugged overnight, hoping to drain the battery to then recharge. After about 12 hrs of not being plugged in, the screen was still showing "Plugged in...", still unresponsive. So I plugged it in and immediately unplugged it before my laptop recognized it as a USB drive, and to my surprise, the progress bar on screen continued to progress to the 7th square. It proceed to display the library and the device seemed to be working again. The battery level showed full so I figured I didn't need to charge again for a while. But again, after about 5 minutes of use, the device locked up again. The only difference now is that a reset seems to flash the display now but only when plugged in, however the display stays frozen with "Plugged in..." So now I'm trying different things and I think there may be hope.

One question for everyone, and I think this may be part of the problem, for those people whose Kobo has crashed as above, when you brought it home, did you immediately plug it in to charge without trying to use it or did you try to play around with it first?

My experience was that when I opened the box, the device looked like it was already on. I checked the battery level and it showed full, so I figured it came pre-charged. So I didn't let it charge before starting to use it. Now I realize that the e-ink display may not need battery power to display text, but rather only to change text on the screen. The battery reading may have been incorrect. I shouldn't have tried to use it before charging. Then when it started working again (who knows why?), I made the same mistake by trying to use it again before charging. If I could only get it respond again, I would immediately charge it. But I'll keep monitoring my local store for stock so I could exchange it. Whichever comes first.

So I think it may be a battery memory issue. Possibly attempting to drain the battery completely will work but if it takes 8000 page turns to drain it, how long will it take if I can't turn any pages or do anything with it? Probably more than 30 days. If you can think of a way to drain the battery more quickly other than by using it, I'd appreciate your input.