Kindle battery life - when things started going wrong

Now for details on what exactly plagues me on the Kindle 2.

The issue surfaced on my mini-kindle vacation -- a long weekend that I spent just reading and experiencing 'the device just disappears' experience as promoted by Amazon.

Around the same time Amazon released a software upgrade which I duly installed and updated. The upgrade promised PDF compatibility and longer battery life.
The PDF compatibility fell short of expectation, since it allows only change of orientation of the document on the kindle but no zooming in and out on the pdf. So if you have a file with smaller fonts (which seems to be the case with most pdfs i have) then it's quite illegible. Guess we need to wait for the next update on this.

But what I was looking forward to most was the upgrade in battery life. But I was disappointed. I had to recharge my kindle twice in 3 days.

Worse, I found that a couple of hours of reading saw the battery charge moving from 90% to 30%-- that too with wireless off. Way too fast a discharge. Especially, since Amazon claims that the Kindle should last 2 weeks with one full charge.

I am not sure what the culprit is, the upgrade or my device-- as I had not tested the Kindle out before applying the upgrade.

But since numerous searches on the new upgrade gave me no other result of anyone else facing this Kindle battery life issue, I assumed it had to be the device.

So I decided to call up the customer service numbers for help and device. More on the experience in my next post.... .

Kindle in India brings me back

Ok, so I have not been regular at all, joining a legion of internet bloggers who sign up but drop out from adding their 2 pence worth to the information jungle.

Not that I had no information to share, just that was not inspired enough to log in and write.

So what wakes me up from this blogging-slumber is this new addition in my life. The addition arrived last month, and I was as excited as a 5-year-old in anticipation of a big gift.

I got an Amazon Kindle 2. Those who I am acquainted to, know me as this absolute book worm...so this was the best gizmo I could ever dream of owning (barring a big flat LCD TV and a BMW Four Wheel Drive with lifetime free fuel supply! -- but that's for another post).

What made having the Kindle more exciting was that I was in India -- and Amazon had just launched it's International Kindle. And at the cost of sounding smug, I was perhaps among the few hundred Indians to own a Kindle in India on Nov 23, 2009. And I fell in love almost immediately.

I took a mini-vacation (one day off from work *wink), sat up cuddled in bed to read from it...read up the Twilight series (2 books), the Last lecture and Superfreakonomics -- all in tandem.

I even got a special side table with drawer stool made -- to house my kindle safe and close to my bed, and ensure it faces no inadvertent accidents!

But 2 weeks on and many downloads of all the 'FREE KINDLE BOOKS' and Free Project Gutenberg books for the Kindle later, the dream threatens to turn a bit sour.

And that's what brings me here so that i can pour my heart out as i wait for my beloved kindle experience not to turn completely Kaput. So that my love affair does not end in a fling....so that...melodramatics aside, I also want to record my experience of the famed Customer Service of Amazon in India.

And the start has not been exactly the very best yet.

P.S. Let what's been kindled not dwindle away just because someone wants to swindle.