Having trouble with your K3? Solutions from the BSI
I’ve written a couple of times about the
Kindle Customer Service Q&A Community
Amazon split that one off from the main
a while back. That was an interesting move, because they had previously had at least 8 simultaneous Kindle forums, then combined them all into one.
I think the idea of this split was to have one forum for opinions and general conversation, and one focused just on questions and answers.
They originally suggested that Kindle Customer Service was going to answer questions there…but for a long time, they didn’t.
So, some other folks (including me) were answering the questions there…pretty much like we had on the main Kindle Community forum. I personally did treat it a bit differently…I didn’t do the silly stuff there, and tried to be more…professional sounding. We developed a habit of stating right at the beginning of each post that we weren’t from Amazon, just to avoid confusion.
Over time, the people answering questions shifted some. A couple of Amazon folks did start answering them, but many questions were still answered by a group of people who generously volunteered their time, effort, and expertise. They were just folks like you…you know, nice people. 
I’m going to start calling them (right now) the BSI. Some of you may recognize the initialism, and why it sort of applies. Sherlock Holmes had a group of helpers…the Baker Street Irregulars. Well, I’m dubbing these folks the Bezos Street Irregulars. 
They aren’t part of Amazon…just a group of people doing good.
One of them, tuxgirl (and doesn’t that sound like a superhero name?) mentioned that they had been giving advice to people on the Q&A forum that were having trouble with their K3s, and it seemed to help.
tuxgirl also credited Periwinkle Blue and Fool for Books. I’ve cited FfB before, and Periwinkle’s all over that forum. There have been others, but I’ll go with tuxgirl’s choices here.
So, what do the BSI suggest?
First, do a “soft reset”. This is something I recommend in any problem situation with the Kindle (at least where it is responsive).
Home-Menu-Settings-Menu-Restart
There’s another choice there that sort of looks like restart…don’t do that one, pick Restart.
The Kindle will turn off and turn itself back on…just like a restart on a computer.
That often fixes things because the Kindle may be in a loop trying to do something, and failing. When it restarts, just like with a computer, it also rechecks everything.
However, the BSI also suggest you might need to plug the Kindle in for a while before restarting, if just restarting doesn’t work.
It’s quite possible to overwhelm a Kindle…always has been. When you put a book on a Kindle, it doesn’t just sit there. The Kindle indexes it. That makes the Kindle have to work harder.
So, what happens when you use your USB to transfer 100 books on there at once? Even if you download them from the Archives, I think the indexes are not imported…so they have to be indexed again.
Plugging the Kindle in for a while will build up some battery charge.
My suggestion has been to leave the Kindle plugged in overnight if you download a lot of books, and the first night you get it. Let the Kindle sleep (rather than turn it off), and it can index to it’s cyberheart’s content.
So, definitely, try that if you are having problems. Charge it up for an hour (or longer…overnight is okay), unplug it from any power sources (wall or USB), and try that restart.
If that works for you, let me know…I’d love the Bezos Street Irregulars to get credit for good deeds well done.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
August 31, 2010 at 11:25 am |
I have noticed that the K3 indexes a lot faster than my K2 did. When downloading from the archive it tells you how many books still need to be indexed. That count never got above 3 even though I was getting all the books from the archive that I had obtained from Amazon because they don’t work otherwise. I had never gotten more than one book at a time from the archives before and was pleased to see that I did not have to wait for it to download before asking for another.
August 31, 2010 at 12:10 pm |
Thanks for that field report, Al!
Interesting! It always seemed to me that they could import and integrate the index on archived books…I wonder if they are doing that?
August 31, 2010 at 12:02 pm |
Hi! This is my first Kindle and I’ve had it since Aug 27th
No real problems and I have been using it fairly constantly since then. Sat morning it started doing an automatic reset when I did certain things like open certain samples, but I did a soft reset and it has been working perfectly since then. I knew to expect this and how to fix this because of reading all the blogs. Thank you!
BTW I am using my K3 to make this comment.
Now, can anyone tell my how to change the TTS voice from male to female (no jokes please)?
August 31, 2010 at 12:14 pm |
Thanks for writing, Doris!
Cool that you are commenting from your K3!
To change the voice (speed or speaker), open an item with text-to-speech. Start the TTS, then hit the Aa button.
That’s how it works on the K2…I don’t see them being explicit in the User’s Guide for the K3 (mine isn’t here yet), but I assume that’s the same.
August 31, 2010 at 4:00 pm
When I was using my K3 TTS the other day, it gave NO OPTION for a male or female voice and just had a male voice. It surprised me since I could switch easily with my K2.
I’ll have to give that a try again. My unit has been acting up a bit but is now smooth running for 2 days after a soft reset.
August 31, 2010 at 4:02 pm |
I just pulled out my unit and the normal male / female voice selection is now present. Interesting that it wasn’t the other day!
August 31, 2010 at 7:04 pm |
Wow… I’m honored. Thanks for posting the advice here. We’ve gotten a few more people swinging by the past day or two, too, which is helping significantly with getting questions answered!
August 31, 2010 at 7:59 pm |
Thanks for writing, tuxgirl!
No problem, it’s well-deserved. Did you like BSI as an initialism?
September 1, 2010 at 3:24 am |
Thanks for the mention, Bufo!
We have been busy over there! Tux has been so great and D. Gorman has showed up with some good help, too. And where would we be without our backbone, Fool?
Could you maybe think about doing a post on reasons why not to turn your Kindle off? Might help newer Kindle owners. Seems to be much confusion over off vs the benefits of sleep, how long to hold the slider over for sleep, off, and a hard restart.
I am sure you have covered it before, but it never hurts to do it again – when (if) you get the chance.
Thanks again!
And BSI sounds very nice. LOL
September 3, 2010 at 1:43 am |
I put on all 700 of my books for indexing, and it definitely made a massive hit in the battery. It was all but run down by the end of the first evening (after an 8 hour charge in the morning). Unfortunately I also have to disagree with Al. The indexing is slow, slow slow! Maybe it’s just because I have more notes everywhere now, but it’s still only done 2/3 of them and I got the Kindle the day before yesterday, and haven’t turned it off yet.
There is a trend in the indexing. Amazon files, and files which dont have any notes attached go first, then amazon files with notes, then mobi files, and finally my .txt files with notes are only just starting to index now. The trouble is that the Kindle 3 won’t open or search the annotated files until they’re indexed, which is unlike my old Kindle 1.
September 3, 2010 at 2:24 am |
Thanks for writing, draegi!
I love field reports! Thanks for that.
Just so I’m clear: you can’t read a book which is annotated until it is indexed? Or is it just that you can’t see the notes?
September 3, 2010 at 3:15 am
I can’t open it at all. I get an error message “The selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this item from Amazon, delete the item and redownload it from Archived items available in Home.”
I wonder if it might have got stuck on a few of these actually. Some of my text files are my most annotated ones. I might try that soft reset you mentioned later on. :>