# Any issues with the Paperwhite?



## NicoleY (May 21, 2013)

My 2 1/2 year old Kindle Keyboard has completely frozen and needs to die in order to get back some of its semblance of normality. Which isn't much;I'm tired of the issues from the thing, so I purchased a Paperwhite yesterday. While I eagerly await it, I read some things about the lighting on it and the screen sometimes being whacky but it was fixed. A friend of mine did tell me that a Kindle needs to be reset every so often since errors come up otherwise, which is why my current one is doing what it's doing.

Thanks for any information and warnings.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

I haven't heard about any errors and needing to be reset. There were problems with the front lighting being uneven and having color blotches - I think the colors have gotten better, from what new buyers have said, but there is still some uneven shadowing, especially at the bottom of the screen, as explained here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&docId=1000841011&linkCode=ur2&pf_rd_i=B007OZNZQ0&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=1404722402&pf_rd_r=1Z7CT9F6WTZ3J6SNRB07&pf_rd_s=center-6-2&pf_rd_t=201&tag=chromeext-20










As you can see, Amazon does not consider this a "problem" and therefore I don't think they've improved it.


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## Linjeakel (Mar 17, 2010)

Generally speaking, I think the uneven lighting at the bottom of the screen only occurs when you have the light too bright for your ambient circumstances and the individual lights become noticeable.

If you look at the photo, the light is turned up to the top setting and the picture taken in a dark room, in a deliberate attempt to make the phenomenon stand out for demonstration purposes. This is something that in practice would never happen - the darker the room, the lower you would turn the light and the less obvious it would be.

That said, all devices are unique and there will always be defective ones - hopefully it won't be yours!


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

I agree with Linda.  And I also think it's the case that some people notice variations in the lighting much more than others. So don't judge it until you've looked at it with YOUR eyes. . . .you might have a friend who looks at it and thinks it's horrible and you might think it's just fine.  It's yours, not your friend's, though. 

I'd also caution against judging based on photographs.  I've seen a LOT of them.  And I've tried to take some myself of my PW which I think his perfect.  When I take a picture, though, there's usually some inconsistency in the lighting visible, even though my naked eye looking at the same thing in the same lighting sees nothing.

As to the resetting -- with any computer it's probably smart to do a full restart periodically -- it clears out any stray bits and bytes and empties cached stuff that's not needed and just ends up taking up space.  The kindle, after all, is a computer.  What I'm guessing might be the case with your old one is that it is quite full.  For indexing and such, there needs to be some empty memory so data can be swapped as you go about choosing books or moving things in and out of collections. NOTE: in the menu you can do a restart or a reset to factory -- usually a restart is all you need -- reset to factory removes all your personal information and may deregister the device so yeah, if you're actually having to do THAT regularly, that's a huge pain! 

As I recall, the k3Kbd was supposed to hold around 3500 books but, practically speaking, if you got up to around 1500, and especially if you have lots of collections, it started to get kind of sluggish.  The PW says 1100 books so you could have similar issues as you get past 500 or 600 books on the device.  I have near 300 in half a dozen collections and I can tell it's starting to respond a bit more slowly at times -- usually when accessing something that's only just been downloaded. I've had it since last September, though and I've never had it freeze up completely.  I do perform a restart via the menu periodically -- maybe every couple of months -- usually when I've plugged it in to charge anyway, or when I've finished reading for the night.


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## LKeenan (Apr 27, 2013)

i can't believe people find those bottom lights a problem. 

that being said, i just bought a PW recently, def had the murky green blotchiness going on throughout the kindle, which looks pretty bad at night, but I'd still prefer this 1000x over any other kindle.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

My PW needs restarting every few weeks, it just seems to start doing odd things: the one I've noticed a couple of times is that the light either stays on when powered off, or doesn't come on when powered on. A restart cures it.

It also seems to get sluggish in the menus after a while, a restart cures that as well.

So I would say that you might have to restart every month or two - but that's pretty good IMHO - I have to restart my PCs, Android phone and Android tablet a lot more often! 

(Serves me right for buying cheap I suppose, both the phone and the tablet were around the £70 mark. The Paperwhite is my most expensive toy. Scrooge isn't in it!  )


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## Alice Coyl (Mar 29, 2011)

My Kindle 3g did the same thing. I had too many books on it. To resolve the issue and get a clean slate, I deregistered the Kindle and reregistered it. That cleared all the books off. I had over 2,000 books and no idea when I would read them. Once I cleaned the books off my Kindle worked like new. I also have a Paperwhite and have to restart it occasionally. Now I only put the books on my PW that I am going to read in the next 30 to 60 days. All the others stay "in the cloud" to be downloaded when I want them.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Indeed. Just because a Kindle *can* store thousands of books, doesn't mean this is the best way of using it.

I also now keep only a smallish number of books - 50-100 - on the Kindle. This doesn't completely eliminate the slowdown (which happens eventually anyway due to indexes growing) but it does help make it less noticeable.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

I tried to keep my number of books and items small on my paperwhite once I got it. My intentions though never do cross reality.  . I did good for a while though. 
Not as bad as I was with my K1 and the SD card.  . Doing a search at that time on it took about 8 minutes. 

Then I did the same with the KK. I said I'll only put on max 200 items. Insert rolling laughing smilie. I am settled on 800 on my KK and about 500 on my paperwhite, after some pruning. It usually lasts about a month. Then the pruning sheers come out again.  

I too restart my PW once in a while. Maybe every 2-3 weeks or so. Especially after the pruning and sorting I seem to do all the time. I fiddle to much I think.


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## ElisabethGFoley (Nov 20, 2011)

Has anyone had issue with transferring ebooks to their Paperwhite via USB? Mine worked perfectly for several months, but one day I was testing some of my own ebook files I'd updated, and I apparently did something wrong trying to overwrite a file that made the whole thing go haywire. Now if I drop files on via USB, they show up in the "Documents" folder when I look at it on the computer, but they don't show up on the Kindle itself. Restarts haven't done any good.

I'm going to have to call customer service about it, I guess, but I thought I'd check in here first in case there was an easy answer...


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

You might drag your Documents folder to your computer to back it up, and then reset the PW to factory settings.  Then, add the books a few at a time back and see if they work.

Betsy


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## ElisabethGFoley (Nov 20, 2011)

If I did that, I'd be able to re-download all my Amazon ebooks from the cloud, correct? The only thing that would concern me about that is this: are all my highlights, bookmarks, etc. in those books preserved if I do that? I can't recall if all the highlights I made on my old Kindle transferred when I put the new one on my account...


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

ElisabethGFoley said:


> If I did that, I'd be able to re-download all my Amazon ebooks from the cloud, correct? The only thing that would concern me about that is this: are all my highlights, bookmarks, etc. in those books preserved if I do that? I can't recall if all the highlights I made on my old Kindle transferred when I put the new one on my account...


If you have the kindle set to archive them they should be -- that would be "Annotations Backup" set to on.

Incidentally, if you send your personal stuff via the Send to Kindle applet, they'll be archived too -- with bookmarks and notes. Send to Kindle for PC is available to download at www.amazon.com/sendtokindle/pc and Send to Kindle for Mac is available for download at www.amazon.com/sendtokindle/mac.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

ElisabethGFoley said:


> If I did that, I'd be able to re-download all my Amazon ebooks from the cloud, correct? The only thing that would concern me about that is this: are all my highlights, bookmarks, etc. in those books preserved if I do that? I can't recall if all the highlights I made on my old Kindle transferred when I put the new one on my account...


Yes, you would be able to re-download; but if you drag a copy of the folder to your hard drive on your PC, you could also try copying the books back over a few at a time to see if that works.

Betsy


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