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Amazon Denies Reports That Airport Scanners Ruin Kindle's e-Ink
judgecorp writes "Amazon has poured cold water on the story, but reports insist that Kindles are sometimes rendered useless by airport baggage handling and security checks. Many people report no problems at all but if something is going wrong, the culprit may not be the X-ray scanner, but a static shock."
I've had both 1st and 2nd generation Kindles and have flown with them each dozens of times. Which means they've been each X-rayed dozens of times.
They both work fine and have never had to be reset. With the 3G radio off, a single charge on either of them lasts weeks, even with daily use.
Kindles are bullet-proof, hardy devices that you can read in direct sunlight. I've even dropped them both, with no damage to either.
This is exactly what an e-reader should be.
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Psych Central - get your psychology on
Theoretically, they make you put away magazines too, I don't see why the Kindle is any different.
Remember when Toyota was in the news for the unintended acceleration thing? Funny, because up until that point, all brands had similar numbers of sporadic cases of UA, but none of them made the news. Then suddenly Toyota makes the news, and out of nowhere, nearly all models of Toyota's began exhibiting the problem at the same time. And it didn't matter if it was a new car just off the lot or a vehicle that had been driven for several years. Suddenly they all started failing at once. Then just as quickly the problem disappeared. But surprisingly, none of the other non-Toyota brands made headlines for similar problems, even though they all experienced it.
At the time a Mercedes engineer said that on every Mercedes, and in his opinion on every car sold, the brakes are about four times stronger than the engine. In other words, you can bring _any_ car with working brakes easily to a standstill by hitting the brakes hard until the car stands still, no matter what the engine tries. The essential bit is hitting the _brake pedal_ and not any other pedal. And actually stopping the car; if you drive at 70mph with your engine revving and hitting the brake pedal to stay at that speed, then eventually the brakes will overheat and fail.
Toyota somewhat respectfully did release results from the so-called "sudden acceleration" problem. In one specific case, where the retired state trooper killed himself and his family in a Lexus, the in-car computer recorded several seconds of full application of the accelerator pedal before the data stopped recording. We're not talking about the throttle, we're talking about the user input device, the accelerator pedal, that was at full application. Of course, it was operator error, and everyone knew that from the beginning. It's sad.
So, yes, this is mass hysteria. Same thing happened to Audi/VW back in the early 1990s where claimants insisted their Audis' cruise control caused cars to plow into buildings when moving from a parking space. Audio/VW's solution was to prevent shifting without simultaneous application of the brake pedal. On newer Audis these instructions are on the display in big, bright letters.
Kriston