Legal Research

The Kindle: Part One

By scott

I was hoping my first post about the Kindle would be less about war and more about peace, about love and not hate. Sadly …

KINDLING 

My Kindle arrived the day before I went on holiday, so it seemed only logical to download a book and take one with me, in additional to my actual books to give it a go. However, I discovered that it didn’t seem to want to connect to my wifi network, which meant i could not try downloading that way so I have to resort to downloading on my pc and transferring to the device, and leaving sorting out the wifi issue until I got back. I will deal with that before going on.

WIFI

When I got back, I double checked all my settings and that the passcode I was entering was right, but, the Kindle kept telling me it was incorrect. Maybe it is faulty Kindle? I headed out in search of a free hotspot. Worked in seconds. Grr.

So after confirming that it was happy to connect to free wifi, I surmised that it must either not recognise some characters in what was my passcode as opposed to word for my wireless network or it must have some stupid arbitary max number of characters instead that said phrase/code was exceeding. [They don’t tell you this, but I think it is a fact]

I returned home, knowing that - to get the Kindle to work at home, I would be faced with changing the settings on 2 phones, a netbook, a laptop, an imac, a pc, and an internet/dab radio - to say my love for Amazon was going down very quickly would not be far short or the mark.

I changed my ‘password/phrase’ for the network - making it shorter, and possibly less secure.Voila. Success on the Kindle. Connected straight away. Now you need to ‘register’ via wifi - wont let you if you connect via PC etc [Stupid and unhelpful]. So I enter my Amazon details in, it ‘registers’ me… NO YOU CANT READ IT…and then it disables all the things I bought and transfered over via the kindle shop via my pc before going on holiday, saying for each: ‘The Selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this from Amazon, delete the item and download it from archived items’ 

To be honest, at this point I would be lying if I said I was remotely happy. I am wirelessly connected to your site, Amazon, and my account where you can see what I have and have not bought, and yet, your system is not smart enough to verify this wirelessly? Amusingly this includes the ‘Welcome Mr …’ doc that has just appeared too. Genius, pure genius.

So I have to deleted all from device and now wirelessly get them back via the ‘archived items’. An additional pain, but I did it. Only, it decided that for some items it would work as they say and for others, it would them repeat the same message of delete and download from archived items again. Indeed, of 6 items, the 6 I have either previously opened in some way, inc two I am reading, wont now work, but the two I have downloaded but had yet to open in any way are fine.

Try reboot. Nope. no good.

I know, I think. I’ll do the delete bit , log on the my Amazon account on my pc and ’send the books’ to the device.   Yes, it works! … Oh, no wait, it sends them but then displays same ‘The Selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this from Amazon, delete the item and download it from archived items’ Now none of the items open.

So in the space of 90mins I have gone from all books opening, but no wifi and functions such as the experimental browser function and managing collections and others bits not working, to wifi working and everything else fucked.

Next?Let’s try deleting all the items from the documents folder for the Kindle when I have it connected to my PC, and then adding them again via the PC….No, that doesn’t work.

Got it! Why not buy something new - a free book - using the device and Wifi, as that MUST work, right? Well, I could certainly buy Dracula, and it certainly transfered to my device, but if I try and open it?  ‘The Selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this from Amazon, delete the item and download it from archived items’ 

Amazon Helpdesk

Started off speaking to a lovely helpful Irish lady, before being passed to an expert called Shane, would indeed seem to know what was what and sorted out the problems with another reboot and some tweeks and we seem to be all working again. Phew.And now to change the password on all  the household devices …

A post about using the Kindle to actually read things will be coming soon.

Full post as published by Information Overload on September 09, 2010 (boomark / email).