Has anyone been following Karen's posts about the Kindle library on booksontheknob.blogspot.com ? You have to go back a bag or two to her two long posts about it.

After reading those, I discerned that the HUNDREDS of free books I have gotten lately from Amazon, have indeed caused my Kindle to freeze and reboot EVEN THOUGH NONE of them get sent to the Kindle--99% go straight to the cloud.

I have decided not to even go through the hundreds of daily offerings, getting cook books, children's books, etc. Scifi, fantasy, I've gotten all kinds of stuff I may never look at. No more.

I will just get what I hear about or see on Karen's site that looks good.

Also I followed all the steps as she laid them out, but it didn't make any difference to the number of archived titles that show up in the Archive line on the Kindle. In fact I have 2 Kindles and they show different numbers LOL.

I have really cut down on all the free eBooks I am getting. I have over 1000 freebies now. Some/most are probably really bad. I picked them up as I didn't know how many would be free, so I grabbed whatever seemed remotely interesting. But, last week, I was in the mood for a new book. What did I do? I downloaded 2 from my public LIBRARY instead. I wanted to read authors I already knew and knew would be good books.

I began sending the freebies to my computer, rather than my reader.  As I never read on the computer.   So I'll hopefully keep the option to download it to the reader.

I also don't send them to my Kindles, but that is what Karen was saying, that even so, having such a huge archive slows down the kindle.

I was reading the Amazon Daily blog this morning, it suddenly froze and restarted. Ever since then (its off line) the archives are at 0. I wonder if it will run faster that way (until the next time I turn wifi on).

I heard a Lot of people on the Amazon forums complain about the K3 freezing once you get around 2000 books on it.  This was long before the Fire came out.   Only ones in Arcive on mine are the titles to the free Audios I been snagging LOL  They dont seem to interfer.   How can a list of book Titles slow it down?  Thats all that in the Arcives! 

Yes it seems strange. However I have 600+ on my KK3g and it reboots for no reason. In fact it is sitting on a shelf next to me, it was in sleep mode with wifi on, and it suddenly rebooted. Karen's info about moving from active archives haven't really made much a difference. I am still getting reboots. I hope I don't have to do a factory reset and loose all my books and collections.

BTW you folks do realise the Kindles ReBoot when the update software, change the ads & when you recieve mags & newspapers.   And anytime a Loaned book comes & goes from your account.  Timed out Library books  .....  hummmm and anytime Amazon send you notice!    BTW mine is a WiFi & I hardly have wifi on & it reboots updates all the time!

Barbara I have never heard of such a thing and I read dozens of forums and blogs daily. Where did you get that information? I'd like to confirm it. 

How often does your Kindle reboot?

Just by watching the K3 itself!  Everytime it reboot theres a new ad/s   also last week it rebooted & the thingy for the current OS number changed.  And I am a efling member everytime I fling a book or when comes back dang if it doent reboot!   LOL

Barbara, I don't believe what you describe is normal behavior.

I am in chat now and they are replacing the Kindle. Still waiting on warranty details.

Warranty only extends to the end of the original warranty, which is next July. I'm kind of afraid to use the lighted cover on the new one.

I am in chat now and they are replacing the Kindle. Still waiting on warranty details.

I just gave mine away, so can't test it now, but do think that it sounds odd that it's turning on and rebooting by itself. A page change and a reboot aren't the same thing, and it shouldn't have to be rebooting and/or re-indexing the system.

Now, if it was already on it would download books and new ads, where it would just re-draw the page. But not reboot except when I updated the firmware. I did that by hand and it only happened once, so don't know if your's is stuck trying to update firmware that's not taking, or the hardware is wonky. It shouldn't be just rebooting on it's own.

Glad to hear they're sending you a new one. They seem to be very good about that.

I didn't think that was normal, either, Cindy. Especially since my first Kindle, I have had 15 months, has never rebooted like this. I had some problems with it when I had too many books on it, so I deleted a lot and now have under 400 and it runs fine. I just put the lighted cover on it to see if that makes a difference. The 2nd kindle I have had since July, didn't act like this until after Dec 1 when I got the Amazon lighted cover. But most reports are that the lighted cover is not a source of problems. And I had it out of the cover for a few days and still experienced the random rebooting.

Urghh!  I have the 2 kindles side by side, watching them...waking them up from time to time. wifi off on both. The one that I am getting replaced just rebooted. 2nd time today, I think.

I had some problems with it when I had too many books on it, so I deleted a lot and now have under 400 and it runs fine.

That's one of the things that irks me, is that the advertised space for book storage on any of the devices doesn't realistically reflect what the machine can actually handle. The Kindle has about 4 gig, IIRC, but can not handle anywhere near the amount of titles that you can get on 4 gig. I know, I've been testing out several of the different machines none of them seem able to really handle a 'full load'.

It's not the amount of books you can store that's the problem, it's that the programming isn't able to handle more than a couple of hundred without straining and sometimes crapping out. I think they all test with about 200 books to see if the program works, advertise space for thousands, and then don't bother to see if the internal database can handle the numbers.

And I know. I have about 20,000 fanfic files and about 7,000 other types, (pro and freebie) I've saved over the years and purchased, and none of the machines will come close to using the space of a 32gig card. That size, and the faster MicroSD cards are really a waste of money since you can't load that many and still have the machine function. DH even figured out why the faster cards seem to be worse than the slower cards. So I'm back to the slow speed MicroSD cards and smaller size. I've decided to now just stay with the Sony's. Only with my luck Sony will quit making them.

They need to pay me to test out these eink machines for them. Lol. I've got the numbers to fry their poor little brains, alright.

And while the Apps on my iPad seem to handle pretty high numbers, I've found a way to carry all my files on my Ipod and just load them individually into each app when needed. I'm not a fan of "The Cloud" idea, so on-machine storage is always a big thing with me.

Cindy, do you use the Sony T1? How many books do you have on it (on the card that you use in it). Also can you make a file tree structure, with multilevel collections? (I have read that this can't be done). I would love to hear of a reader with e-ink that could organize files in multi-level directories and hold a couple thousand without suffering in performance.

Cindy, do you use the Sony T1? How many books do you have on it (on the card that you use in it).

Yeah, I have a T1 with 7,098 files and a prs-350 with 4,796 files. A Nook Touch with 8,684 files.

With the T1 I found I can get about 12,000 DRM-less epub files on them, and it'lll sort pretty quickly. But I usually sideload in batches of 800 or so, so don't do all at once.

More than that it and seems to get confused. Also, I load books on the main first, let it index, then the MicroSDcard. There seems to be a glitch in programming where the books on the device are given certain sorting numbers and the card other numbers, but sometimes it give one book from each the same number and gums things up. So I fill up the main memory first, then the card.

And I use an 8gig 4speed card. DH was reading an article where the highspeed cards have two internal wires to speed up the read/write process, and he found another article where the eReaders are only made with the one wire. So if the single wire doesn't line up right the eReader can't see the card. Had a bit of problem with that with the Sony, but the Nook Touch was worse. One minute the card would be recognized, the next it would disapear.

So I went back to the slower (1 wire) cards and they're both had no problems seeing and using the microSDcards.

Also can you make a file tree structure, with multilevel collections? (I have read that this can't be done).

IIRC, you can store in tree structure. But I use Tags in the program Calibre as Collections, so just load them into one file through calibre and let it sort by Collections. So haven't played with file structures that the device can't show me.

The Nook is a nice machine, but I'm not sure you can do files structures you can see, although the device may find the books anyway. But it doesn't do collections very well.

(The Kindle can do collections, only by hand, one at a time, and at 400 seemed to stall on me. Too much a PITA to do.)

The Kobo Touch is very slow, and I'm not really fond of it, although it has some nice font sizes to chose from.

A good thing to do is to go to www.mobileread.com/forums and hang around the forums for each device, and check see if they're hacking them much. Sometimes you can find a good hack that will add the sort of functions you want, if you're willing to try to hack it. I haven't played with any of those, so can't swear by them or remember what they're all up to.

Wow. The Sony sounds amazing. I may have to get one of those at some point. I would love to have 2,000 books (as an example) and not experience slowing down of functions.

I go to mobilread multiple times a day LOL. In fact I have it open now.

I go to mobilread multiple times a day LOL. In fact I have it open now.

It's a fun place to hang around.

For me, the speed and ability to make my own Collections are what has decided me on sticking with the Sony's. That, and the fact I can make my own Standby/Pause screens. For example, the prs-350 is just Sherlock Homes fanfic from various Universes and Doyle's stories, so the Standby screen on it is just Sherlock Holmes pictures. Seriously makes me happy. Lol.

Another question for you Cindy--if you wanted to just use the card to put your books in, could you load them via a card reader and then load the card into the Sony, as often as you wanted to do that? Would that cause any problems? That was the way I used my Jetbook, I only hooked the reader to the PC a couple times. 

Another question for you Cindy--if you wanted to just use the card to put your books in, could you load them via a card reader and then load the card into the Sony, as often as you wanted to do that? Would that cause any problems?

You can. I've done it. But IIRC the Sony then will show the books but not have the collection information.

I use Calibre, set the program to send the books to the Sony and use my "Tags" as "Collections" on the Sony, then load them from Calibre. Then as it loads Calibre sets the Collection on the Sony.

If you sideload (and I'm hoping I'm remember the right device here...) it'll see the books and load them but won't know that there's a Collection setting for each book.

I don't mind plugging mine in, becasue it keeps the Collections up to date, and easier to Delete a book from Calibre. That can take some time doing it on the Sony.

And I don't know how to use the Sony Reader program to do all that any more. I gave up on it a long time ago. You may be able to just do the SD card on it and have it come out fine.

Thanks, food for thought. Used Soy 350's are quite cheap on Amazon of all places LOL.

The PRS-350's are smaller, with no card slot. You'll want one of the other older ones or the T1 for a card slot. T1 Takes microSD cards, the others the larger SD cards.

You might check out any place they do trade-ins. We've got a used book store that takes electronic trade ins and they have a few different Sonys' at any one time.

Oh that's right. Well that is one drawback. I like the very small size along with e-ink. The T1 is the size of the Kindle Keyboard, I believe. I was thinking of getting the K4 (non touch) b/c it is smaller. Re-thinking that now.

I was thinking of getting the K4 (non touch) b/c it is smaller. Re-thinking that now.

I haven't played with the keyboard version in a while, but think the Sony T1 is a bit smaller. I know they're lighter than the Kindle Touch I gave to my mom.

If you get a Kindle Touch or the other one the same size, just be careful about getting a case. They look the same size but are a tiny bit different in size and no way will one case fit the other. I was assured the cases were the same size, but had to take one back. They fit so tight that there's no interchanging the Amazon produced ones.

I think there is a T1 in my near future. I am giddy with the thought of holding thousands of books on my ereader.