Mind Mash

I think the Kindle is a great way to read books, and I enjoy my Kindle 2. There are some definite negatives, especially the DRM on the books – what happens when Amazon decides not to support the format any more? – and now I have found another one.

The power management on the Kindle 2 is definitely under par. The battery drains in a few days, even when the unit is off. It will sometimes warn you that your battery is flat even after you have charged it, because it seems to generate the warning before checking to see if the battery state has changed.

Now, I have found a worse instance of that problem: my Kindle 2 seems to be unchargeable and unusable. The battery had become flat, and the Kindle was displaying a critical battery warning. I charged the Kindle, but when I turn it on it only gets part way through its boot-from-cold process before complaining again of the critical flat battery, at which point it stops doing any thing. The problem is described in a Kindleboards thread but the proposed solution does not seem to work.

What to do?

Update A few cycles of hard power off, charging, turning on etc seemed to fix the issue. Still, the firmware needs updating for sure.