What were you doing to them? I treat my Kindle terribly and the only damage its ever had is a small part of the screen which no longer works because my keys pushed into it.

What Kindle do you have? My Kindle 3 (complete with physical keyboard!) still keeps rocking, but my Voyage broke after less than half a year.

I moved to a Kobo Glo HD after that. DRM free, account free, same screen, more robust.

I've got a Paperwhite, so maybe that's what did it. I don't really see the point in the higher end models myself, I wouldn't even have bought the Paperwhite if it weren't for the screen backlight.

I bought the Voyage for its better screen… a week or so before Amazon announced an updated Paperwhite with the same screen.

I abuse the hell out of my Paperwhite, and it only suffered any ill effects when it got dropped into a campfire on a recent trip. I literally cannot imagine what you could be doing to reliably destroy Kindles during normal travel.