Busted Kindle? Help me, kindle peeps!

So I am helping out a sick and disabled writer friend who has to move out of her vastly-overstuffed apartment and into assisted living. Any advice you can provide will go to an extremely good cause!

She has a Kindle. It appears to be busted. The bottom 1/3 of the screen is black, and the top 2/3 are light gray. I can't seem to turn it on by poking at the various buttons.

1. Does that mean it's broken?
2. Is there any sort of warranty on those things? Is it possible to send back to Amazon and have it fixed for free or for cheap? Anybody know where to send it? She can't really do anything for herself, or even get into her inaccessible apartment, so I got to figure this out on my own, but I don't have the manual or anything.

This friend has about a thousand books, I think, and will only be able to keep maybe 20 of them. The Kindle could be very useful for her needs.

Ah, thanks lady! This is an excellent list of questions. I will ask her the next time I see her. Hopefully I can go online and help sort her out.

TheIT said:

Also, the basic "is it plugged in" question: is the battery charged? Plug it into the wall via the power cord. The device is usable while plugged into a wall socket, but not to a computer. I think the Amazon Kindle page has the basic manual available online if you need the map for what the buttons do.

What type of Kindle is it? Kindle 1, Kindle 2, or DX?

To test whether it's just the display that's broken, you could try hooking it up to a PC with the USB cable. It'll show up as an external disk drive which you can drag/drop files to.

Click to expand...

I believe it's a DX. I will keep my eye out for the power cord. There is a horrifying amount of junk in her place. I will try to hook it up to my PC too!

Thanks again! I may be back for more questions!

OK, cool. From a very quick search, because I am too demoralized to look any harder--she seems to have a model that only came out in 2010, and it seems to come with a 1-year warranty. That makes me very optimistic that I will be able to get it replaced for her. This would be a very good thing indeed.

I found the Kindle cord! In a bag full of dusty obsolete computer cables and old mail that I was on the verge of chucking out. The hard drive seems to work, and the screen seems busted, though it did sort of flash some light at me. Customer service said if I get the email address that the Kindle is linked to, I should be able to get it repaired/replaced. Huzzah! Thanks for the advice, yall.

Aaand the new Kindle is in the mail! Thanks for all the help. My friend will be very happy when it comes. AW Tech Help forum wins the universe again!!!!