Time to charge my Kindle2, and I can't find the friggin charger/cable which came with it, in the jungle of cables and chargers which I think of as my home.
I have many cables with flat USB plugs, many cables with square USB plugs, and many cables with mini-USB plugs... but the K2 has a "micro-USB-plug" for crissakes! That's at least four different plugs for one interface! What the f**k are these people thinking!
Update: I went to PC World, which is nearby, and get this: this computer/electronics store the size of a football field does not have such a cable!
But I did find the cable and charger at last, somehow it had managed to bury itself deep within the mess in one of the places I keep cables and such.
Update: on the positive side, a new software update to the Kindle 2 means longer battery life, and that it now can read PDF documents with the original layout intact. And you can now manually rotate the screen manually, which means that most PDF documents will be legible (barely) because the width of the page is used to fill the screen instead of the height. For example, I can load the thing with all my camera manuals on PDF, so I can have the manual with me anywhere, no matter which camera(s) I happen to have chosen that day.
Not to mention, of course, the huge wealth of free reading material which is available.
It's to make you buy at least one new cable / charger for every different thing you buy. You don't think the big box stores make money on the gadgets, do you? You should see the profit margins they get on accessories.
ReplyDeletePat
Five years from now, small gadgets won't need plugs anymore, they will all use resonant magnetic coupling to charge from the mat you put them on (available now, as a more-or-less clumsy & limited retrofit).
ReplyDeleteNow, let's all pray that the manufacturers can agree on a common standard so that we don't need a mat for each device!
And if that doesn't take off, the ITU issued a standard for a common wall-wart design for mobile phones, in an effort to reduce e-waste by eliminating the need for a distinct charger for each device.
So my Kodak camera and dock have a special, small USB connector. I grabbed one of those any usb to any usb kits you can buy, mine was by Gold X
ReplyDeletehttp://cableorganizer.com/goldx-usb-quickconnect-camera-kit/
It looked like it had the parts, but no, Kodak was just a bit smaller. So I did the only thing possible, contacted Sales Support via their website, looking to "buy" the end that I needed.
After a couple of emails I'd sent measurements and description, and I soon go the correct plug, free gratis, by mail a few days later.
That kit has saved me no end of grief. There are others out there, and I'd suggest that you get one just because...
We had a similar issue with co-ax connectors when my job involved a lot more RF than it does now. We had a great little kit which came with TNC, BNC, male and female
http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=290-1045-ND
... But didn't you say that the GoldX kit did *not* have the plug that you needed?
ReplyDeleteI think you should photograph your Kindle manual with each of your cameras, and keep those images on your memory card so you can figure out how to operate the Kindle if you have problems opening up any of the camera manuals.
ReplyDeleteI think I need an iPhone too, in case I forget how to use both the Kindle and the camera.
ReplyDelete