# Slow to download books



## meowzart (Mar 29, 2011)

I've notice the last few months that it takes a long time to download books to my paperwhite. It used to be it would be almost instantaneous but now it takes several minutes.  
Even when I press on it and it says queuing and then downloading it still doesnt actually show up with the little check mark for several minutes.  I'd say 3-5 minutes to download. 

Has anyone else noticed this?  Is my edition of PW old or what??
Also noticed the page turns seem slower


----------



## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

The basics things to check / do are:

1. Restart your Kindle - not just switch it off - hold you finger on the off button till it reboots and you get to see the boy under the tree as it comes back up, or use restart in the menu (NOT reset).

2. How many books have you got on your Kindle? If it's very full, it could cause this problem. If so, try sending some back to the cloud, rather than keeping them on your device.

3. You could also check if you have any books previously downloaded that are stuck indexing - that would slow things down. To find out, from the Home screen, search for something nonesensical like zxyqzxyq and see what comes up - it will tell you if any books can't be searched because they're indexing. If there are any, remove those from the Kindle and redownload them one at a time.

You could of course be correct that your Kindle is just getting old, but it's worth trying. If all else fails speak to Kindle customer service - if you tell them your Kindle is dying they might offer you a part exchange for a refurb, or a voucher towards a new one or something like that. They're not obliged to of course, if it's out of warranty, but they often do that.


----------



## meowzart (Mar 29, 2011)

Awesome - thanks.  I'll try all that!!  Very helpful


----------



## barryem (Oct 19, 2010)

If your Kindle is a 3G model it'll still use Wifi to download if it can reach your router and connect properly. Wifi is noticeably faster than 3G although it shouldn't take minutes longer. I have 3G in my Kindle and downloading via Wifi takes half a minute and via 3G nearly a minute for a large book. But that's about all. Anyway you might check that you're connecting properly to Wifi if you have 3G. If you don't have 3G it's probably something else.

I wonder if Amazon might be a little slower these days, too.

Also, you might test your internet speed. A good site for that is http://www.speedtest.net/

My ISP got real slow about 3 or 4 years ago and stayed that way for well over a year. At times I was unable to watch videos and downloading books was very slow. Then it upgraded it's system and things went back to normal. Speedtest.net will tell you your speed. If your download speed is well below 1 Mbps that's probably the cause. Also a ping or latency of more than about 200ms can cause that. Latency can sort of be thought of as turn around time and since each download involves a lot of interactions that can make a big difference. 200ms is way too much but ISPs vary a lot in latency. 20ms is more normal. I just checked mine and it's 124 ms, which is slow. It's usually 12 to about 30 ms.

Barry


----------



## KyleConnor (Mar 8, 2017)

Oh. I faced that issue with my paperwhite too. But it was anyways old and I wanted a new one. So ended up buying the Oasis instead. I guess I'll go back and delete some old books that I wouldn't read.


----------

