Well, my DR800's screen is dying and has gotten to the point where it's basically unusable. For those that are interested there are more details at the end of this post
My first question: do I have any recourse other than tossing it and buying some other reader? I really love the DR800, and I'm not too excited about having to find a replacement.
My second question: as DR800 owners what would you suggest as the next best alternative? I like e-ink, the large display of the DR800, and the simple interface/controls. I also really liked the fact that the software was to some extent open so I could play around with adding/modifying programs (thought that seems to be quite hard to find).
One morning I found that my reader had a few horizontal dead lines. The only thing that I could think of that had happened was a spill a few weeks before. I cleaned the reader right away and it didn't seem any worse for wear until this issue. The dead lines were only horizontal (not the mixed horizontal/vertical you usually see with a cracked screen).
The dead line only messed up about half a line of text, so I could still read, but when I let the battery run down a few days later and it had to reboot I noticed some other issues. During the boot screen, when those six little dots appear to show progress, the screen above the horizontal defect got darker every time a dot appeared. I could also hear an audible click coinciding with the dots appearing.
I thought maybe something from the spill had finally caused an intermittent short (?) or other hardware issue, so I decided (maybe not the best idea) to try to open it up and see if there was something obvious from the spill that could be cleaned. I didn't think to take pictures then, but I might open it again and post them since I couldn't find a how-to for the DR800 anywhere. While I was getting it open I created a small crack in the screen making it now virtually unusable. Unfortunately it didn't look like the spill penetrated to the circuit board, so I'm not sure what the initial failure was. Also, after putting it back together and turning it on, the sequential darkening was even worse.
Anyway, I guess the moral is to be especially careful if you ever open it up, and that apparently the unit is somewhat spill resistant
