Kindle Stability

[shanghaichica]

Hi,

I've never owned a kindle before or had any experience with one. I own a Sony reader and occasionally I experience problems with oppening certain books, or the reader shutting itself down and re-starting or it freezing. From looking at the Sony area on this forum and around the internet it seems that these problems are quite common among Sony user. So far I have never had any serious problems with my reader and it only happens occassionally. My question is for those who own kindles, does the kindle tend to suffer from any of the issues mentioned above or any issues really???

I havent been a member of this forum long but I rarely see any threads in the kindle area releating to problems with the reader, so I am wondering if the Kindle might be more stable than the Sony devices???

[suecsi]

I still have my old Sony PRS505 and PRS300, which I will probably sell of at some stage (or give the 505 to my mum) and have a Kindle 2i and DX (Kindle 3 on order).

The 505 was ok but the PRS300 did just what you are describing on a frequent occasions - something that drove me nuts and to try out the Kindle.

I never could quite determine whether it was some rogue EPUB formatting (one of the explanations offered) or the reader itself - I'm sure it was the reader as the same book would be fine on the PRS505 (though that threw a hissy fit once or twice).

neither of my Kindles has crashed so far and I have applied hacks to them and everything but they remain very stable.

[Ben Thornton]

I've not had problems with freezing on my Sony. On a forum, you will get reports of problems, but it's difficult to gauge how common they are. In general, the more tailored to one function a device is, the more stable it is, and my impression generally is that ereaders tend to be pretty reliable for reading. Amazon seem better than Sony at releasing firmware updates, which should help with stability.

[TallMomof2]

I've never had a problem with any of my Kindles freezing when opening a document. (I've owned one since the original Kindle which my Mom now uses.) I don't read a lot of pdf files which might cause problems.

[carld]

The only time I've had my Kindle freeze is when using the web browser on certain pages. But, that doesn't bother me, they say it's experimental for a reason. I did have the Kindle crash once. I wasn't paying attention and unplugged the USB cable during a transfer. It rebooted and everything was fine.

[AnemicOak]

The only problem I've ever had with my Kindle (K2us) was when I first got it. It was locking up and the battery was draining quickly. This came down to the fact that I had loaded 400+ books onto it all at once and then went straight to reading while in the background it was trying to index everything. When I took some books off and then added them back more slowly (over a few days) there were no problems and have been zero problems since. Of all my readers it's the one that 'just works' all the time.

No problem with the Kindle freezing. My Sony PRS-300 does freeze on occasion. I think it is due to the slow processor not being able to handle large books. I know that calibre allows you to set ePub conversion to keep individual html files within a large ePub to 260 KB or less. I've heard that books which have html files larger than 260 KB can cause problems on Sony readers.

BTW, an ePub is basicaly a compressed/zipped folder containing XML and HTML files and various info for a book. Sony readers seem to be very picky about the structures of those files and not very forgiving if the book was produced with non-standard ePub info. Calibre conversion seems to clear up many of these problems if/when you encounter them.

[JeremyZ]

The only time I had my K2 freeze on me was when I ran the battery down. I didn't think it was down far enough, since the battery gauge showed half full. But apparently it is not accurate.

I called Amazon and they instructed me how to restart it after charging and it should "calibrate" the battery gauge. The calibration didn't work, it is still empty when it reads half full. But I do get at least a couple weeks' worth of reading on one charge.

I recharge now before I get to that point and have never had another problem.

[tomsem]

My kindle used to spontaneously restart for no discernible reason, but has been very stable since the most recent updates. I can cause a freeze if I:
- Turn on TTS
- pause TTS
- let it sit until screensaver kicks in
- now it won't wake up and has to be cold-started

But that's just a bug in an 'experimental' feature, and easily avoided. (hmm, and I just tried to repro, and couldn't...)

Of course K3 may have some issues since it will have new firmware, but one hopes their QE team is learning and developing more complete test plans.

[kindlekitten]

my old K1 would freeze periodically. neither ofthe K2s have had a single problem

[robb01]

Never had a problem here

[JaneD]

Lately I've had a lot of problems with my DX freezing, but it's only been since I installed the games. Before that, it was totally stable. I've deleted Every Word and am making my peace with having to delete the other one too.

[bwaldron]

My K2 locks up and needs restarting once in a very great while. I use it daily, and I'd classify it as very stable. My older K1 is also very stable, only a few reboots needed in 2 years.

[shanghaichica]

Thanks for the replies. The kindle sounds wuite stable overall. Can't wait to get mine.

[rapidblue]

Kindle is definitely one of the most stable e-readers out there Had my K2i for 10 months now and can only recall one time where I picked it up an noticed it had rebooted and exited my book, and I use it daily