We have a weird story today about a tech support problem. It’s a really easy one to describe, and sort of funny, so no need to go rushing off screaming in fear of high tech gobbledygook.
The story concerns a friend who had a Kindle Fire that he likes a lot. Though its main feature is as an ebook reader, it also has basic functions, mainly for browsing the Internet and streaming video. He’s had an annoying problem for a while though where the screen goes black far more often than ideal. (One time is less than ideal, but such hiccups do happen.) He went online to see if others had the same problem, and if so were any solutions offered. And, in fact, it turns out to be a very common problem, with many hundreds of people complaining. And no serious suggestions. He even tracked down tech articles written about the problem – that’s how prevalent the issue is. (One loony suggestion was that the device was likely overheating, so put it in the freezer to cool down. And this was from a tech journalist.) My friend finally called Kindle Fire tech support, and they were as bewildered as my friend and spent a long time on the phone trying to fix it. To no avail. So, in the end, they said they’d send him a new unit, because this one was still in warranty. A few hours later, my friend – who is pretty adept at technology – thought he’d check into something. He went into the Settings option and then Video section, and began searching through the various areas…until he found something SO basic, and SO obvious that he knew he had to be right. It was that there is a setting for when the screen should blank out after a certain period of time when there was no usage – and the default was set for just one minute!! This is to save battery power, but “one minute” is incredibly much too fast. So, he just changed it to 30 minutes – and it’s worked perfectly since there. He never has gone a half-hour with accessing the device. Either there’s TV news video streaming or a TV show or something like that, or he’s checking his email or browsing the Internet. But such an easy solution isn’t the weird thing. The weird thing is that Kindle tech support didn’t know this was the easy fix. It’s not that the guy on the phone didn’t know, but this sort of thing – especially an issue that has SO many user complaints online (and therefore, no doubt, phone calls to tech support) – will always have the fix noted in the official notes every tech support person has at their finger tips. And it’s not even “a problem,” it’s just a matter of changing the default setting. How in the world tech support doesn’t have this in their manual is just plain weird. Weird, too, is that when my friend checked online complaints, he didn’t come across anyone explaining the easy fix. I’m sure that out there across the Internet there probably were people who gave the fix, since my friend didn’t check out hundreds of complaints, but given how incredibly easy and (even more) basic this fix is – changing the default – it’s a bit surprising that it wasn’t given every time. Mainly, though, it’s amazing that Kindle tech support didn’t just say, “Change the default for screen time.” In their favor, they are sending a new Kindle Fire to my friend (though it’s under warranty, so they pretty much have to, but still, they did so without any hesitancy). So, that’s a good thing. And in the end, here’s a Tech Tip for you: if you have a Kindle Fire, and the screen keeps going to black – just go into settings and change when the default is set for the screen timing out.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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