Some time ago I mentioned that my kindle had stopped working. At the time, I was pretty upset since it was an expensive item and I’d only gotten about a year out of it. It was refusing to hold a charge and when I called the company, they stated that the battery was dead. Okay, so I asked how I am supposed to access it and change it out.
Sorry, you can’t. When the battery goes, you have to buy a new one. They’d offer me a discount on a new one if I sent the original in, however. Said discount was pretty minor and I was disinterested in paying huge sums of money for an e-reader. I don’t get enough personal use out of them to warrant it. Honestly, the only reason I bought it was to see how my books were formatting on a tablet.
I stuck it in a box and forgot it existed. Flash forward to the present. I am going through boxes that never got emptied from our last move and find the kindle. On a whim, I decided to plug it in and skim over what I had on it. Nothing super exciting of course until I noticed the little icon in the corner. A double-take was in order. It was charging as if nothing had ever been wrong.
I thought it was a visual glitch, so left it plugged in for a bit and unplugged it, expecting it to shut down immediately. Instead, it stayed on. It was charging again. Nothing had changed with the Kindle and older batteries aren’t known for improving. I had only one conclusion I could make. I’d been swindled.
Certain vehicles are programmed to drop your gas mileage and performance periodically. It has nothing to do with anything mechanical. Instead, it is a preset form of planned obsolescence. It’s intended to force you to take the vehicle in for regular servicing. A simple reset of the system resolves the issues. It seems that Kindle is similarly designed.
After a set period of time, regardless of usage, it dies. You then send it back to the company for your discount and they send you another. They made money and you have a working Kindle again. Of course, since I never took mine in, whatever built in timer was reset by the long period without power. The system rebooted itself. So now I have a functional Kindle again. Without throwing money down the well of planned obsolescence.
Of course, that would be far more exciting if I was keen on e-reading over traditional. It’s still noteworthy. On a lark, I tested it on another person’s Kindle that had been dead and tossed in a drawer. Lo and behold, it was the same for theirs. Both now hold a charge like they did before. I wonder how many others have run into this issue. Have any of my readers found this is the case for them?
