Firmware Update Amazon - Get rid of mandatory indexing PLEASE

[BobLenx]

Why all this indexing? Why not make full-system indexing an option for those who might find a need to search for something across ALL of their documents. Maybe a Menu Index option that would show any books not yet indexed and let the user opt to index specific ones or all of them.

Quite frankly I have NEVER done a cross document search in the 18 plus months I have owned a K2 - and now have my K3. I might want to be able to search within the book I am current reading, so only index a book the first time I open it

It takes time - it burns up the battery - seems to be a cause of a lot of the rebooting which is being reported on the K3 - and often under certain circumstances when a reboot or restart is required, the system starts reindexing all over again.

(My K3 which has been experiencing problems just decided to reindex about 30 or so books I had just watched it complete two hours ago. Including the Kindle users guide that came installed on the system - go figure.)

[Ervserver]

I certainly could understand a setting in which a user could turn on / off the indexing feature

[Alisa]

I posted this already on another thread so please pardon me reposting it here:

Because adding a user control will inevitably lead to more support contacts. Just people not knowing what it means and emailing support costs money, let alone people turning it off and then not understanding why their text searches don't work. Maybe you don't search your text but a lot of us do. And it also might shock you to know that there are lots of people who turn to customer support first, before they look at the manual or google around for an answer. These people are expensive. Customer support costs can kill your profits.

On the flip side, indexing is pretty quick. Once your books are indexed, that's it. This is a one-time performance hit. The Kindle only indexes additions. Most people don't add tons of books at a time, either. Those of us that have established libraries of DRM-free books do, but we're in the minority. Since I've had a Kindle before, I knew about this so I waited until I was done reading for the evening before doing a big book transfer. Then I plugged it in to charge and let it go. So we're looking at a rare issue with an easy workaround.

If you look at the cost/benefit from Amazon's perspective it makes no sense for them to add this as a feature. They'd have to take the time and money to develop and test the control plus deal with all the support issues so a small handful of people won't be put out that they get some battery drain when they plunk 100 books on their device. Do you think many people going to buy another model of ebook reader because it lets you disable searching? In an ideal world, every possible feature would be offered. In the real world, we have to do the math to figure out if it makes economic sense to do it. How much does it add to the cost? Does it add enough value to justify that? Will we gain or lose customers?

That's not to say I don't support them making it more efficient. Say, only indexing when idle or only indexing when charging.

[tomsem]

Perhaps they could rig it to index only when it is in standby, as long as they could shut it down completely (release system resources etc.) and quickly when you push the slider.

Actually I wish they'd index PDF files, too.

[Pushka]

It isnt a big deal and is over and done within in 12 hours.

[0x0x]

I am with BobLenx for this one!

edit: I do not care how much customer support costs - best thing would be the possibility to install custom community firmwares.