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I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

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Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#41

Post by ltultraweight »

83457 wrote: post #26
Andrex wrote: post #4

Not trying to shill too hard, but it's rare I fall in love with a device the way I've fallen in love with my Remarkable 2. I can't say it was 100% worth the price (half was paid as a gift), but everything about it is refreshingly elegant and simple. Great to know recovering from a brick is possible too.

My main gripe is lack of direct bookmarking of pages in ebooks or even listing jump links to highlighted areas. I like writing on it but also want to use for reading large ebooks, highlighting important info, and keeping notes in context. Not realistic to do that if have to scroll through all pages.

I installed koreader and I'm quite happy with reading long books that way.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#42

Post by selykg »

So, I guess I'll give my (sadly) negative experience with these things.

First, I sort of ordered it on a whim. I liked the idea and thought it'd be cool to use for work while not having to use my personal iPad even more.

This is their decision, but they ship with DHL, which is absolutely godawful in literally every experience I've had with them. I learned after ordering that the device doesn't allow searching within your handwritten notes, a feature I use regularly in GoodNotes on my iPad.

So, I looked at how to return the device before I even got it. Their support said to just tell DHL to return to shipper. I called DHL they said "sure, we'll do that" for the next two days I kept getting text messages from DHL saying they hadn't managed to ship it back yet, they'd update me the next day.

Then the device shows up at my doorstep and DHL skipped requiring a signature and just dropped it on the porch. Great.

So I email support back and get the process to fully return from them started.

They send me to a "returns" website that doesn't see my order. Great. Email them back and ask for how to workaround this.

The next email they send me a second returns site.. they have two apparently. Then this time their instructions are about returning for a replacement device. Email back after that and clarify, I am not returning for another device, I am returning and getting a refund. They said oh sure, our mistake.

Their returns site (2nd site) was about as unclear as can be. In fact their instructions in their email were, yet again, for returning for a replacement device, the site said to print 3 copies of one sheet, another one copy of the label to attach to the box. I did so, finally got DHL scheduled to pick it up.

DHL says "nope, we need a different sheet of paper" which was not provided to me until I went searching for it in the returns site. At this point DHL is gone with the box.

I write some feedback to Remarkable about their incredibly terrible instructions and they just keep apologizing but referencing my replacement device despite repeating 5 times at this point that I'm returning for a refund.

DHL has had the package for over 10 days now and it's not moving. My luck, Remarkable is going to get the stupid thing at some point and then ship me a replacement device instead of refunding me and I'll have to do this stupid insanity all over again.

The device itself seems fine, I opened and used it while I was waiting for Remarkable to figure their shit out on my return as each email takes over a day to receive a response. So I have about a week of waiting to return this thing just in waiting for them to send me appropriate return instructions. Another 10 days of screwing around with DHL and no movement of the product.

I would really recommend NOT getting one of these devices unless you are 100% sure you're going to keep it. If you have any inkling of an idea that you may utilize the return process, just don't, it's not worth it.

This has been the single WORST customer support experience I've ever had at this point. Their support people simply regurgitate snippets, and sadly they can't even use the correct snippets, and for that they take over 24 hours to get back to you with those incorrect instructions.

Run, just run away.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#43

Post by kadoban »

colecut wrote: post #32
83457 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main gripe is lack of direct bookmarking of pages in ebooks or even listing jump links to highlighted areas. I like writing on it but also want to use for reading large ebooks, highlighting important info, and keeping notes in context. Not realistic to do that if have to scroll through all pages.

I haven't done it yet myself, but I've read it's fairly easy to install KOReader on the Remarkable 2 to provide a better ereader experience. Though when using this software, you wouldn't be able to mark up the text or add notes in the 'remarkable' way.

It is indeed easy and very worth it. The rm2 is the _best_ way to read text books and comics I've ever seen (using koreader), and separately it's great for taking notes. Those two uses don't really overlap for me so it's fine that they're in separate OSes, especially because it's one gesture to switch between them.

The one and only thing that really bothers me about the device is the storage is pretty small. It's fine for books, but not great for comics, you end up having to swap out old ones instead of just having your whole library available.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#44

Post by pvg »

colecut wrote: post #32
83457 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main gripe is lack of direct bookmarking of pages in ebooks or even listing jump links to highlighted areas. I like writing on it but also want to use for reading large ebooks, highlighting important info, and keeping notes in context. Not realistic to do that if have to scroll through all pages.

I haven't done it yet myself, but I've read it's fairly easy to install KOReader on the Remarkable 2 to provide a better ereader experience. Though when using this software, you wouldn't be able to mark up the text or add notes in the 'remarkable' way.

I tried this and promptly bricked it, although in a more recoverable way than the OP. It’s not hard to do it right (I’d got some version of a dependency wrong) but there seem to be few guardrails. I just convert epubs to pdfs now for rm2 reading

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#45

Post by formerly_proven »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #10

I work part-time for my university's help desk and I was both impressed and disappointed the first time I came across one of these--one the one hand, its highly customizable and supports SSH access. On the other hand, there is shockingly no way to get the MAC address without connecting via SSH, even though this is popular among academics who often need to get onto MAC filtered networks. In hindsight, we probably coul…

I was under the impression that having the MAC address on the device's label was some kind of regulatory requirement for Wifi - I have never seen a wireless device without it.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#46

Post by fouc »

cortesoft wrote: post #6

Isn't `bricked then recovered` a contradiction in terms?

I think "bricked" as a term originated from flashing the firmware on mobile phones. If the firmware ended up in a non-recoverable state, the phone became as useful as a brick. It was theoretically possible to take physical intervention to pull the firmware chip out and flash it with an fpga programmer tool, but most people wouldn't have the equipment for that.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#49

Post by myself248 »

unexpected wrote: post #3

This is anxiety-inducing and a good promo for the pinenote!

The Pinenote can't arrive fast enough! I'm sitting on a ReMarkable 2 that I hate because I didn't realize how serious they were about crippling the usefulness of a really beautiful stack of hardware.

It's really, Really, REALLY dead-set against letting you do anything useful like use wikipedia or stackoverflow on your ultra-long-battery-life beautiful-display device that you might, I dunno, want to use to look at reference material.

Also Bluetooth is hardware-disabled, so no keyboard. What the hell, people. After seeing all the hacks and stuff I figured that might be possible, didn't learn otherwise until after placing the order. Whoops.

Re: I bricked then recovered my reMarkable 2

#50

Post by jcun4128 »

hvocode wrote: post #38
idorosen wrote: post #15

My only regret about this device is that it seems to lack full disk encryption on the device or any meaningful privacy (encryption) for documents stored in reMarkable Cloud...which is all of them if you want to use features like Screen Share (f.k.a. LiveView). ReMarkable should not be able to access contents of docs backed up from my device without my password or recovery key, but AFAICT, there is no such protection…

I’m in the same boat. Due to security restrictions of my employer I can’t use cloud services to store work related stuff. I was really bummed when I discovered that a lot of the interesting features of my RM2 require their cloud service. I’ve dug through the GitHub repos of RM2 hacks and open source tools that are available, but it still feels like I’m missing out.

Can you not just use it as is? I have not connected to a WiFi yet and you can sync to your own cloud.

I guess you do need a way to get the docs on the device. Their sync process is weird.

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