Somewhere out over the North Sea I took off my jacket, leaned back, and sipped on my beer. My jacket has a nice big inside pocket and, if I take the cover of my kindle, it fits perfectly in the pocket. It’s a perfect fit. I mean, you wouldn’t know it was there …
A few days later I dug out my kindle and noticed the display was suffering from a split personality. The bottom half was telling me to switch it on, while the top half was still showing three little birds, outside my window, singing a sweet song. Oh dear. After a visit to the University of Google it became apparent to me that this problem is not uncommon. Weird, but not uncommon. Weird because you can run your finger across the screen and feel nothing; no cracks no blemishes. But it’s clearly broke. It may be silky smooth on the outside but it hides a shattered interior.
The forums on Amazon buzz with feel-good stories of customers phoning Amazon and getting great trade-in deals on their ‘just out of warranty’ kindles. My Kindle was not just out of warranty, it was exceedingly, comfortably and generously out of warranty, and had been for a couple of years. Still worth a try …
Well that didn’t go anywhere useful. Nice chap all the same, and together across the ether we visited the Amazon website where we discussed the nice shiny new kindles and he advised me that I could ‘buy’ one, at the price shown. Apparently bears also go to the bathroom in the woods. Ok, let’s go to ebay.
Aha … Now we’re cooking … This looks just the chap. A couple of days later a huge ball of bubble-wrap arrives at work, and somewhere inside, is a shiny new kindle screen. And there’s even a link to their Youtube video, yeah, well whatever. Why watch a youtube video when it’s NELUG night, and, well, you can run linux on a kindle can’t you? Apparently.
Richard takes the kindle to bits
That evening I turned up with a broken kindle, a new screen, and a random selection of small screwdrivers. I dumped them on the table and headed for the bar. A few minutes later I returned with my drink to find surgery was already underway. In the time it takes to say “a pint of Black Sheep please” Richard had prised open the cover, removed the battery, and was poking at various bits of the kindle’s anatomy with professional interest.
I made a perfunctory pretense of watching the instruction video on youtube but the Nelug hive mind was working quite well without it. With the new screen fitted re-assembly was, as they say, simply the reverse of disassembly. I stuck to the Black Sheep while Richard stuck to the screwdriver and, despite some frisky screws that had decided to go for a wander and wanted to live somewhere else for a while, it all ended well.
The broken screen on the left with the repaired Kindle on the right