In Store Reading Issue

[harryzee]

The following has happened with both autonootered 1.1 and stock 1.2. I am running CM7.0.2 from an sd card also. Using a dual boot (manual button(s)) press.

For the second time, I have gone to a local B&N, gotten my Cafe Vanilla Frappicino, found a comfortable seat, booted up into the BN software, chose "Read In Store" for "Discovery of Witches" watched the book d/l and then immediately get the message that I have exceeded the time allotment for that day and to try again the next day!

This happened (with this title) under AN3.0/BN1.1 and again today with stock 1.2. My e-mail in/out worked fine when store connected as did all othere store related items. This tells me the connection was not the issue.

I found the knowledgeable rep in the store who I had discussed things with before and we tried to get it ("Discovery...") to re-load (unsuccessfully), rebooted several times and even rebootted with the sd card removed. That last time the title did reload but still came up with the "expired time" message. We picked another title at random and that had no problems!

The rep called the Corporate IT, explained the issue, gave them my unit's s/n and verified that there were no server related issues at that time.

I verified with him that there were no B&N "roadblocks" in place that prevent you from on-going reading of the same title which he stated there was not based on his own usage/experience. Example, The second time I opened that title in the store, it took me directly to where I had previously left off!

One of the reasons I haven't redone my internal memory to CM7+ is that I want to retain the in-store reading capability but this is really becoming a major annoyance.

I have two other local BN's where I will try and access this specific title early this week to see if history continues to repeat itself.

Any ideas/thoughts as to what the root cause is and any possible solutions???

 

[emmy#AC]

I have the same problem with a stock NOOK Color (1.1, which I upgraded to 1.2). I did not try "Read in Store" before installing 1.2.

I tried "Read in Store" for the first time 3 weekends ago. I opened two books (call them "A" and "B"). I read a bit from each, but neither for an hour. Then during the week I saw a B&N bookclubs entry discussing the sticky expiration problem. The poster said there was a workaround, which was to open a book that you don't care about last, and this would guard against the permanent expiration of a book that you want to read again.

So, the following weekend, just in case I might have the problem, I tried opening book "A", which was the penultimate one that I looked at previously. I got the download screen, but when the green progress bar finished and the "READ" button activated, the "expired" message popped up immediately when I chose "READ". I tried book "B"; same thing. Then I tried "A" again, and got an error message about there being a problem downloading the book. Tried once more, and the download screen came up, but no progress bar, and the "READ" button stayed greyed out. (This 3-strikes-and-you're-out behavior was consistent across all books.) Next I tried two different books ("C" and "D"). This time I let each one stay open for an hour and expire.

Back the next weekend: I tried loading "A" first, and got the same 3-strikes behavior. Ditto for "B", "C" and "D". By this time, I was showing the problem to the local NOOK specialists. One of them called support, while the other one and I tried some more experiments. We opened a new book "E", exited from it after a few seconds, and opened "F". Back to "E", which opened correctly, to the page we had been on. "F" also opened. This proves that there was no problem with my accessing "Read in Store". Then I shut the device off completely, restarted, and we saw that both books "E" and "F" exhibited the 3-strikes behavior. My conclusion is that any book that I open with "Read in Store" will be permanently expired when I turn off my machine.

As I anticipated, the phone help was useless. The local person was told that the phone person had never heard of this problem, then the phone person immediately asked if I would mind doing a factory reset. I had to bite my tongue at that point, though I wasn't surprised. Having worked for a real computer company for almost 30 years, I know that if one of our level 1 support people said: "Gee, I don't have a clue about that problem. Would you mind reinstalling a backlevel of the OS to see if that helps?" that support person would be looking for a new job. I declined to wipe out the machine, and the phone person said there was nothing else that could be done. I told the local person that I wanted to open a formal problem report. She relayed this to phone-person, who told her there was no way to do this. Local-person rolled her eyes and asked to speak to phone-person's manager, and I was told that they were opening a problem. The only thing I heard after that was a survey from B&N asking how satisfied I was with the help I got. I filled up the comment section, but don't expect to hear any more about this problem from them.

The thing that bothers me more than the actual problem is that B&N seems to have blundered into the computer business and doesn't have any sense of what that means. (along with the fact that I'm used to debugging my own problems, and I really don't know anything about this system...)