Fun time: Called Kindle support (or, rather, they called me--that's how Amazon does it) because I wanted to know what we do when our Fire HD 8.9's battery stops charging altogether (it's losing charge somewhat faster than it used to, even after we deleted the battery-sucking Washington Post, and it's 25 months old, so not under warranty).
but, of course, what "Judy" (probably in India, based on accent) did was go through half an hour of checking and changing settings... and, eventually said all they could do was offer a discount on a new Kindle, since the battery's not user-replaceable and they don't repair Kindles. My wife *hates* throwaway devices with a passion; this may be a problem.
- walt crawford
And, sigh, the usual "turn off wifi" advice doesn't really work well since our primary use is reading the San Francisco Chronicle; without wifi on overnight, the new issue won't be there.
- walt crawford
Just a grump...unless someone has useful advice. "Get an iDevice" does not count as useful advice.
- walt crawford
Try charging it on a different electric plug. My iPod Shuffle (2nd gen) now will only charge when I connect it through a computer, not through a wall charger. My non-engineering theory is that too much power is going through the wall charger and charging through the computer is gentler. My husband thinks that's a bunch of %$#^& but it's working for me.
- Jacquelin Siegel
We use the Kindle-specific charger, so I doubt that's it, but thanks for the suggestion. In any case, the *decline* in charge time indicates an eventual problem. I've now turned off WiFi (and will load the Chron each morning); we'll see if that helps enough.
- walt crawford
Do you have enough evidence yet to conclude it's a throw away device? Seems equally likely at this point that you have an anomaly device that they're willing to replace.
- lris
Tablets in general don't have much that can be repaired. My iDevices and android device don't have replaceable batteries either as far as I know.
- lris
Iris: No, they said explicitly: won't replace, but will offer a discount (didn't say how much). And yes, I'm aware that this is common... Looks like the changes I've made may keep it going for a year or two more, then I have to convince my wife that throwaway is reasonable--a tough sell. (I thought Apple would replace an iDevice battery for a hefty fee. Am I wrong?)
- walt crawford
in related news, what is UP with the WaPo being such a hog? It's 1.3 GB!! on a 10 GB ipad, and when we deleted content & downloaded new content … it went to 1.9 GB!! *deleted*
- Stephan!e•CogSc!L!brar!an
They keep installing the WaPo on my kindle automatically and I just keep taking it off. Ugh.
- ellbeecee
*Very* related news, I suspect. The WaPo digital version appears to be very slick and visual. Which may also mean very large.
- walt crawford
Maybe this is one of the reasons the thing doesn't cost as much as other tablets to begin with, then.
- lris
i've not had trouble with mine, although i did have to replace the charging cable...mostly because my cats decided it was a good thing to chew on
- Sir Shuping is just sir
ellbee: I think if you delete the *app* for WaPo, the daily will just show up on your Newsstand, not actually get downloaded. First day's experience with wifi off except to download: both of us read the paper (probably 1.5-2 hours total) and the battery's at 80%. So this is reasonably promising. (And it took, oh, 90 seconds to turn on wifi, get the network, go to the newsstand and get today's paper, and complete the download. Sunday will probably take a little longer.)
- walt crawford