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Kindle 3G RIP
ironjade
Posts: 10,010
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My Kindle 3G fell off its perch a few days ago after continuous crashes and circular reboots. Amazon pronounced it dead at the scene but sold me a refurbished one, which arrived today at a decent discount so its not all bad news.
Sadly, the replacement is wi-fi only so no more free internet until the next gen 3G arrives in November.
I confess I felt lost without my favourite gadget. I gave up my mobile with no problem but being without the Kindle was like losing a limb.
Sadly, the replacement is wi-fi only so no more free internet until the next gen 3G arrives in November.
I confess I felt lost without my favourite gadget. I gave up my mobile with no problem but being without the Kindle was like losing a limb.
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My main concern is the life of the betteries in the new Kindles. I have heard lots of bad things about the Kindle Fire having poor batterylife owing to it being HD and being able to do more than just being an e-book reader which is all I want it to be. I can do the internet, emails etc on my phone and tablet.
Should future Kindles turn out to have rubbish battery life because of all the unnecessary stuff that has been aded then that will be me walking away from Kindle to another e-book reader and if they all go that way I'll go back to hardcopy books again.
3G is very handy and far better than crappy, unreliable and insecure wi-fi. With 3G I've bought books in the street, on stations and in bed, no logging in, no cost etc. Brilliant!
I may be wrong but I think the keyboard 3G Kindle is no longer in production.
Iink it is which is a shame. I hate touch screen, the scurge of the typos. Not everyone has fingertips the size of pinheads so can hit the buttons they want.
If in the future I have to put up with that, which I suspect I will, then OK, but I want decent battery life not a load of pointless apps and things I "can" do on the machine, but have no interest in doing.
My wife got one for her birthday, and I'm trying to decide if I want one. The one in the link is £70 at the moment. Do they ever get lower than that?
I can't imagine any gadget giving you free (albeit glacially slow) internet access for much less than that. Seems like a good deal.
My replacement was, like those in your link, also refurbished but doesn't appear to have anything wrong with it.
Thanks for the info
Yeah- the free 3g is a very interesting feature. Just ogtta know what I can do with it lol.
You can surf the net with it but it's very slow (except, oddly enough, when accessing the Kindle store) and obviously only gives black and white images. You can stop some page elements, e.g. pictures, from loading by using Article Mode to speed it up a bit.
It's handy and a lot less temperamental than wi-fi.
Where did you get yours from? A new improved model was released last week, with faster page turns and more even light distribution across the screen
Check the firmware version of the model you have against what Amazon say is the latest firmware for the latest model and then return yours and get the new version.
edit: the new version was announced last week and will be available from 9 October, it can be pre ordered now.
It also had a useful mp3 player but that too seems to have gone.
I'm not fussed, the paperwhite I have is excellent and the page turns are certainly fast enough as it is. Light distribution is as I thought it would be, too. Technology is always being superceded.
I've never had any problems connecting any of my kindles to my home wifi. When I'm out on the rare occasion I want to buy a book a just tether it to my mobile phone and that works perfectly. I understand that a 3G kindle is important for a lot of people but I've never seen the need for it myself.
No it wasn't. At least for me it wasn't. I've never had any problems connecting my kindle keyboard or kindle to touch to various wifi connections.
Gotcha. With comments like " crappy, unreliable and insecure wi-fi" I thought there might've been a general issue with older Kindles and wi-fi. Must've just been the OPs unit!
I don't have wireless at home (or a mobile phone that still works) and had endless freezes and failures with wi-fi elsewhere. 3G was much better.
McDonald's wi-fi forced me to do a full reset because it locked up my Kindle so badly.
I'll have a go with the wi-fi Kindle next week when I'm out and then see how I fare when Virgin's Super Hub router finally arrives. I don't feel terribly confident but we shall see . . .
Admittedly, public wifi access, IMHO, is generally crappy. I thought you were talking about issues with your Kindle's connection - you'd probably have issues connecting anything to a McDonalds wifi - I certainly do! (think how many people are rinsing a free wifi connection at any one time... all adds to a naff connection.)
There shouldn't be any problems whatsoever with your home Virgin wifi, when that's up and running. Why should there be?
It's Virgin . . .
I have a few family and friends on Virgin. Certainly no problems with wifi whenever I've been around and connected to their routers. Internet connection and wifi connection are two different things that essentially help to provide the same service.
I turned on my laptop the other day and got a message from Virgin saying something about upgrading the service and restarting my router (which I don't have) and nothing I did could get past it.
Their help desk seemed surprised that so many angry people were calling them; I was surpised they weren't all outside with torches and pitchforks.:)