If you've been reading a while, you have probably seen me mention the "reboot bug" on the Kindle Keyboards (Kindle3) that occurs when your archives get "too large". If you've picked up larges numbers of the free books on Kindle, you may have experienced it for yourself: when wireless is on, the Kindle will reboot at the end of it's "sync" cycle; apparently in an attempt to allocate more space to hold the list of archived books in memory. A second part of the same bug (since it never gets enough space to hold the entire list) is that the archive is truncated, only showing roughly the first 3200-2500 items (including personal docs and audible books). This is an issue on most of the Kindle devices and apps, in fact, and is related to a choice the developers made when designing it (after all, "no one" would ever have over 3,000 books, right?). On the Kindle Touch, I haven't seen the rebooting issue (although you still can't see the entire archive), but it has a more insidious issue: if your archives are extremely large, the device will brick when wireless is left on (the magic number seems to be around 16,000 items or so). When this happens, the only choice has been to return the unit to Amazon and get a new one (and keep wireless off at all times).
Amazon has (finally) released an update for both of these devices that should both cure the reboot/bricking issues and change the way your archive is loaded: the newest 4,000 or so items are loaded into the device's archive list, rather than the oldest. Sadly, you still can't sort the archive by date (a feature that the original Kindle had and which I wish the would bring back, as it was extremely useful for families that have more than one Kindle on their account) and are forced to page thru the list sorted by author or title (doing a search is still very slow, as there are so many items to check), which means you have to know someone bought a new book or a pre-order was delivered or you'll never find it. Hopefully they'll update the Kindle Apps with this new ordering (but older Kindles are out of luck - owners of a K2, DX and K1 will have to deal with the problems of having a large archive or just keep wireless off).
The updates also have a number of other features, including a long awaited implementation of parental controls on the Kindle Keyboard (but not Touch), letting you block kids (or irresponsible adults) from using the web browser, Kindle store and/or archives. Blocking the archives should also speed the device up even more, since it won't download the list into memory and index it.
KF8 support has been added to both devices with this update (not that it gives you much other than bloated file sizes, for most books; others will look worse, if the custom fonts included are not as well optimized as the built-in Kindle fonts). The Touch received KF8 with the 5.1 update (which had never downloaded to my device) and 5.1.2 should have the bricking and archive fix (you have to install 5.1 first). The only possibly exciting option I see for KF8 (for the reader; not for those who insist Amazon has to 'do EPUB' to 'survive', an argument that is hard to make when Amazon dominates the ebook market) is Pan and Zoom for Images and Tables: once you click on a table or image, you can use the 5-way controller to move around in the image/table and click again to choose the viewing size.
For the Kindle Keyboard only, you also get support for Children's Picture Books with Kindle Text Pop-Up and Panel View has been added for Kindle Comic Books. Last, some basic support for WhisperSync for Voice has been added to the Kindle Keyboard. If you listen to the audiobook on the K3, then Sync (this is an important step), then all other devices will be able to "GoTo" the Last Page Read and sync to the last part of the book listened to. The audible app on the K3 doesn't have a sync feature though, so it's pretty much a one-way update to pick up reading where you left off listening. Hopefully we'll see the audiobook app on the new Kindle Fires be able to pick up where you left off reading in the ebook edition.
One nice touch - the "Turn Wireless Off/On" menu choice remains on both devices (for the baby Kindle, you now have to go into the Settings menu and choose Airplane Mode to turn off WiFi, which a lot of people do to extend their battery life). Also, for those using Text-to-Speech, this feature still works on both devices.
Get the firmware updates for the Kindle Keyboard or the firmware updates for the Kindle Touch from the Amazon site and follow the instructions there to transfer them to your Kindle via USB. The updates will probably download automatically, eventually, but those who have a reboot problem or are close to the bricking number should not attempt to get the update wirelessly.
The rebooting issue seems to be entirely fixed - I've had my Kindle K's wireless on for several hours now and it hasn't rebooted once. One odd side effect: on my Kindle with Special Offers, it no longer shows the Special Offers menu, after I did a System Reset (the option originally moved to just below the Archive menu option, but is now missing entirely). I also now have the original screensavers; normally this would be a $20 option, to remove the offers, so some may think this is a major improvement. But, with Special Offers starting back up again, I want them on my Kindle, so I don't miss out on any of them.
