It was December 9, 2011 - my wife and I headed over to the Barnes and Noble store at the Foothills Mall in Tucson to learn about the Nook. We were pretty much open minded, and I had not yet done very much homework on E-readers. We were on a fact-finding mission, which succeeded by finding more facts, and of an entirely different nature than we anticipated.

It was the Christmas season, and you might imagine that Nooks were selling like hotcakes as gift items. A fellow was stationed near the Nook display, with nothing else to do but field questions. He was nice at first. When asked about Kindle versus Nook, he got less friendly. He pointed out that with the Nook, you can come into the local store and get "friendly help and support", an ironic comment given the turn things took. When I asked if it ran Android, he got edgy (don't ask me why). When I asked about Gorilla Glass, he got outright ugly. "The Kindle doesn't have Gorilla Glass, he exploded - that isn't used on any computer products, only a few large screen TV's." I told him that was not true. I told him the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy use Gorilla Glass. He grumbled and admitted he knew about the Xoom. Then he burst out with, "I'll bet you didn't know that 500,000 Kindle Fire units were recalled! Go look into that mister!". I told him that was news to me and that I would certainly look into it. After this, he drifted off and avoided us (what did I do wrong?).

I got back to my computer and began searching online for reports of a Kindle recall. I have found nothing besides a couple of sites that say that the rumor of a Kindle recall is false. This fellow is either misinformed or an outrageous liar, I am not in a position to say which.

I am also looking into whether or not the Kindle has Gorilla glass. (Note that I never got an answer to my question about whether the Kindle has Gorilla Glass, but I can presume from the reaction my question got that is does not). Amazon is less than forthcoming about the glass.. Everyone else seems to think they use Gorilla glass, and whatever it is they use certainly seems to withstand the tests people subject it to. A September, 2011 speech by Jeff Bezos when the Kindle Fire was launched provides the following:

The Kindle Fire has a Gorilla Glass-protected, multitouch-capable IPS display, a TI OMAP4 dual-core processor, and at 14.6 ounces (413g), a pretty lightweight frame. The resolution on that screen is 1024 x 600, same as on RIMs BlackBerry Playbook, and the Kindle Fires physical dimensions are 7.5 x 4.7 x 0.45 inches (190 x 120 x 11.5mm). There is 8GB of built-in storage and the battery is rated to last for eight hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback (with Wi-Fi switched off). A 3.5mm headphone jack is naturally included as is a pair of top-mounted stereo speakers