Going from the Kindle 2 to, or adding, a DX

When Amazon released the Kindle 2 in February, many Kindle 1 owners decided to sell their Kindle 1's to get a Kindle 2.
  Soon, some Kindle 2 owners will move to or add Kindle DX units.

Amazon has a terrific feature which allows one person to share Kindle books purchased from Amazon with up to 5 other Kindle units IF the other Kindles are under that person's account -- meaning the account owner pays for all Amazon Kindle books ordered by any of the other Kindle users.

However, when it comes to subscriptions to Kindle versions of newspapers or magazines, this can't be done. Amazon explains that publishers have demanded that a newspaper or magazine be allowed on only one unit. A subscription owner can't share a morning newspaper with another household member, even, except to give up the Kindle for awhile.

Books purchased from Amazon are backed up and kept on their servers for owners to re-download when wanted if these had been deleted from the Kindle to save the mind from the sight of too many books in the listing.  Amazon even backs up (with approval) any highlighting or notes made so that these are also downloadable with the book as needed.

Preparation by Amazon
Amazon will need to address one area of confusion that will arise (and already has caused some unhappiness when an owner receives a Kindle replacement for a defective or malfunctioning unit).

The problem is the inability to open, for viewing on the replacement or subsequent Kindle, any older magazine or newspaper issues that were purchased more than 7 issues past.
  In the non-Kindle world, owners like to stack up older magazines to read individual articles later or to revisit them.

For Kindlers who buy magazines and want to keep them for reference (the library concept again, including the NY Sunday Times with its book reviews and its Sunday Magazine), the benefit is the ability to search their Kindles for references in those older book reviews or world news.

This traditional use of older periodicals is possible currently only if a Kindle owner keeps these older issues on the current Kindle and also keeps the current Kindle -- but it's not possible if wanting to view these on a replacement Kindle, even when upgrading and spending more for the next unit.

  When the old Kindle (even a malfunctioning one) is gone, so are the older issues.

The reason for the problem
Newspapers and magazines are kept on Amazon servers for only the last seven issues or so.  But these issues can stay on the original Kindle and of course they can be backed up onto the owner's computer(s) -- and therein lies a problem that will be seen more when customers add a DX to the household or move to the DX from the Kindle 2.

Why? Because many have decided to order a DX for reading the newspaper at home or for reading PDFs while at the office - while using the Kindle 2 as a more portable device outside the home for reading current news and books.  Or they are selling their Kindle 2, with old subscription issues on it.

Decision to be made
An individual who owns both a Kindle 2 and a DX will have to decide which unit will get the periodicals -- the one used when commuting to work?  Or the big one at home, which is marketed as better for newsreaders and PDFs?

As before, the DX is better for reading newspapers but older magazine articles won't be openable on the DX even if the user's Kindle 2 is sold.
  As mentioned, this happened to many when moving from the Kindle 1 to the Kindle 2.

There IS a solution, and I hope Amazon addresses this before the situation is a surprise to new DX owners moving from the older Kindles:

SOLUTION:
Allow Kindle owners to upload, to an Amazon area, the older magazine issues - those older magazine files have fields that give the specific ID of the older Kindle unit and, as a result, the older issues can be read only on the unit that has an ID matching the device ID number in those fields.

  Amazon could have a batch process in place that would replace the files' fields for device ID information with the ID for the owner's new current Kindle device.

This is a DRM (Digital-Rights-Management) or copyright issue - a very hot topic right now in the e-books area.  Respect for Copyrighted works is important to most creators of work, and to their publishers.
  However, there's such a thing as unnecessarily restrictive execution of copyright protection procedures that don't permit an owner of a purchased magazine to be able to read older issues except with one device which may no longer be functioning or which has been sold to another person.

  I've talked with customer representatives about this but they have received no information as to how this will be handled for the DX purchases.  I'm hoping Amazon will have a solution in place before the release though.

  A post to a forum today reminded me that Customer Service, while very responsive to any problems with individual Kindles, moves slowly on some issues important to Kindle owners such as the long standing one in which customer Ted Inoue has requested that Amazon let him know if his darker fonts installed by many happy Kindle owners might void the warranty.  He presented the recommended font-set sampes to the Developers via Customer Service some time ago.

  The Kindle-1 customizable-screensavers-installation (similar in scope of external modification) received assurances from Customer Service that the install would not void the Kindle 1 warranty.   Inoue is still awaiting word on his recommended font-sets (they exist as trials or tests) for use by Amazon, as are other Amazon customers, hoping to keep using the added fonts that help with screen-contrast issues for some.

Amazon Customer Fixes Kindle-2 Dim-Font Plight

Ted Inoue's trial replacement fonts (a sort of beta-test, created and run by an Amazon customer) have brought ecstatic responses by other customers who had considered returning their Kindle 2s due to a strongly-perceived problem (backed up by photographs) on some units with too-faint fonts on a somewhat darker background than used with the Kindle 1.
  The strong lure of the Kindle-2 has been shown by the customers petitioning for darker fonts rather than returning their units.

See Inoue's animated image showing the effect of some of the replacement fonts relative to Kindle-2's basic font.  Click on the image at that page to start the animation showing rotation of pages displayed with various fonts from his trial font-set.

UPDATED PARAGRAPH - 5/2/09 - This was pointed to in an earlier blog entry but belongs here too: See See TechCrunch's article that makes Inoue's replacement-font results clear, using his webpage example.  But Inoue later found that it's not due to font-smoothing but to the amount of black that gets rendered on the surface that we see.

 Most of those wanting the font-changes seem to be customers who found their Kindle 1 displays beautiful but have been finding their Kindle-2 units difficult to read and a strain on their eyes.  (Most customers, of course receive units with good displays -- I am one of them but, I've seen photos of clearly substandard ones).

 Inoue and many other customers have seen quite a variation in the various K2 screens (with regard to lightness of gray and darkness of fonts), indicating some quality control problems with e-Ink's 16-shade screen affecting some customers.

 Amazon is aware of the problem and does replace the units until the customer gets one with a display that works for the customer and which doesn't fade in direct sunlight upon page-turns).  I imagine they get replacements from E-Ink in Cambridge.

 Amazon's replacement policy has been very good, though some of their customer service reps don't get that policy message until a customer asks for a supervisor.

 Also, too many customers have received units with fonts that failed in direct sunlight.  I've read that some Sony units have this problem too but that Sony doesn't replace the units, saying to at least one customer that the e-Ink display does not work in direct sunlight.

 Amazon does replace any unsatisfactory units and will, until the customer has a unit that works correctly; they do this because an E-Ink technology feature is that it works just as well in direct sunlight.  And they appear to have better customer service policies than Sony.
 Lightness of fonts may not be directly related to that sunlight exposure failure, but they often co-exist.

 As far as we know, this affects "only" several hundred people visiting the Amazon forums to ask questions, who have signed a petition requesting Amazon institute a simple fix, such as a font with more 'black' ink showing in the characters.  Customer Inoue has been able to do this, and he's provided customers with a variety of font-sets to choose from and they're extremely pleased about the results.

Caveat:   Problem?  Anyone testing these font-replacements must UNinstall them before any periodic Amazon Kindle firmware updates that come, so far, once a month.  But they can re-install them after the Amazon updates.

The history of this has been described in the original entries for 1) Screen Contrast problems for some users who had loved their Kindle 1 displays, which was further reported on by Wired.com) and 2) Ted Inoue's new findings, a few days ago.

  In mid-April, Inoue wrote to Amazon Customer Service Representatives at their official public Amazon forum topic, letting them know of his successful trial results and offering them font-sets to try from his tests making fairly easy font-replacements for the Kindle 2.
  Customer Service representatives on their own forum thread have never responded to Ted.
  It's as if users and this problem for many of them just don't matter to Amazon, which means it apparently doesn't matter to Jeff Bezos (or they would reply in a constructive way).

  The forum thread by users requesting darker fonts on the Kindle 2 now numbers about 800 posts.
  Since the topic-thread participants are very happy with Inoue's replacement fonts, they are now asking that Amazon do something like this, especially since Inoue has shown it can be done quite easily, possibly with options to choose the default set or a darker one.