Amazon Is Ending Support For Older Kindles 62
Starting May 20th, Amazon will stop Kindle Store access for Kindle and Kindle Fire devices released in 2012 and earlier. After that date, those devices will "no longer be able to purchase, borrow, or download new content." Owners can still read content already on the device, but if an affected device is reset or deregistered after the cutoff, it can't be re-registered. The Verge reports: The complete list of affected devices goes all the way back to the original Kindle that launched in 2007 with a full keyboard and scroll wheel. [...] Amazon will be notifying affected users over email ahead of May 20th with an explanation of what their older devices can and cannot do. Pre-2012 Kindle Fire devices will be subjected to the same limitations as Kindle e-readers when it comes to books, but other apps and Amazon services on those devices won't be impacted.
For longtime users wanting to take the opportunity to upgrade to newer Kindle hardware, Amazon will offer a 20 percent discount on new Kindle devices and a $20 ebook credit that will be added to their accounts after upgrading, valid until June 20th, 2026, at 11:59PM PT. Their older purchases will be available on new devices as long as they log in to the same account they've been using for the past 14 years or more.
For longtime users wanting to take the opportunity to upgrade to newer Kindle hardware, Amazon will offer a 20 percent discount on new Kindle devices and a $20 ebook credit that will be added to their accounts after upgrading, valid until June 20th, 2026, at 11:59PM PT. Their older purchases will be available on new devices as long as they log in to the same account they've been using for the past 14 years or more.
So what (Score:3)
I'm still using my Kindle 3. It's still working fine, with the original battery and everything.
I don't let it connect to the Internet and really don't care if Amazon still supports it.
It has pretty limited mods though. I was able to get shell access but you can't do much with it. What's the most mod-friendly e-reader?
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The most mod friendly is you go on aliexpress and buy a screen and a driver. 25-50 bucks will get you a good starter kit I think, depending on your valuation of "good".
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I make plenty of devices. I could make an epub viewer, using a low power chip and an e-ink display, but I find my manufacturing tolerances to be less than stringent than Amazon's. I'll pay the extra for a fit and finish that might actually last 13 years such that you have to worry about a major electronics company EOLing it.
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When it comes to the question of DIY or buy, I think those are very fair points and agree with the conclusion. I'm not sure if they are points in an argument that was being raised, but I think they're fair. Either that or you're just upset with all mention of DIY on behalf of Louis Rossmans vacuum cleaner mod project.
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I likely would still be using my Kindle 3 Keyboard, except my dog got hold of it at one point.
I still think that was the best form factor they've ever offered.
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I likely would still be using my Kindle 3 Keyboard, except my dog got hold of it at one point.
I still think that was the best form factor they've ever offered.
And it tasted like chicken.
Re:So what (Score:5, Interesting)
My Kindle 3 died recently, and I replaced it with a basic Kobo Clara. The browser is a mixed blessing (very buggy), but certain familiar mods—custom screensavers and ssh are built in. It was very weird to buy a device that wants to be hacked! It literally comes with a file called "ssh-disabled" that contains the instructions "rename this file to ssh-enabled and reboot," no jailbreak required.
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Ads: The homescreen has a couple of small store links at the bottom that are relatively unobtrusive. There are no recommendations forced on you unless you go to the store. There is a store button at the bottom of the homescreen, which I imagine is pretty handy if you actually want to get your eBooks from them.
Organization: You have to set up book categories after putting files on the device (like how the Kindle 3 was back in the day) but there are no forced labels or anything. There are at least 2 homebrew
Nokia N9 Re:So what (Score:2)
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... What's the most mod-friendly e-reader?
May I recommend Boox: https://shop.boox.com/ [boox.com]
I got a Boox Go Color 7 - color eink, Android OS, has its own ebook store and app, can install Kindle and BN apps as well as other epub apps. You can also install many Android apps as-is. I haven't looked up what is possible beyond that (rooting, alternative OS's, etc..), but it's a solid offering IMO.
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What's the most mod-friendly e-reader?
Probably this one [pine64.com].
What about epubs you own yourself? (Score:2)
I don't know much (read: anything at all) about kindles other than the name and that they're Amazon's own ebook reader.
My question is, can or could you (still) load epub files that you have downloaded elsewhere onto one of these things?
If so then perhaps there isn't much lost other than direct access to Amazon's bookstore and if that's the case then isn't this more Amazon's loss than the end users?
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About 50% of the content on my current Paperwhite is not-Amazon.
Re:What about epubs you own yourself? (Score:5, Informative)
You can sideload ebooks, but not in epub format. You must convert the epub to an Amazon format - mobi or, for later Kindles, AZW3. Many programs are available for this kind of conversion. Or for a full featured ebook library manager, check out a great program called Calibre. Calibre will convert an epub to mobi on-the-fly & put it on your kindle with just one click.
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Not quite true. My Kindle Paperwhite can read epub, pdf, and txt documents natively. Kindle used to provide an email address for your Kindle so you could email documents to your Kindle to read. I still have some txt and pdf files from Project Gutenberg that are on my Kindle.
There is nothing magic about epub files. They are essentially HTML documents zipped together with cover images and CSS style sheets. You can change the extension of an epub document to zip and open it as a normal zip file. I have c
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You can read other formats directly by running KOReader on a jailbroken Kindle.
Yes (Score:2)
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Calibre will let you sideload and organize an offline ebook library: https://calibre-ebook.com/ [calibre-ebook.com]
If you install the DeDRM_tools plugin, it'll also let you strip DRM from the ebooks in your Kindle and save local copies: https://github.com/Satsuoni/De... [github.com]
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DeDRM only works for Kindles 4 and earlier, which is the biggest reason Amazon is discontinuing support for them. So as of May 20, there is no practical way to decrypt Kindle books and back them up any longer.
Obviously there are some other reasons for dropping support including the fact that older Kindles don't support formats like epub with more advanced layout and formatting options. But it still stinks.
Sadly I don't know of any decent alternative to buy ebooks at a reasonable price that I can back up t
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Sadly I don't know of any decent alternative to buy ebooks at a reasonable price that I can back up to my local calibre library.
Kobo
Google Play Books
eBooks.com
Just off the top of my head those three ebook stores are each available to a large chunk of the world, sell ebooks from the major publishers, usually at competitive prices, and use Adobe's ADE DRM which is trivial to remove.
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DeDRM works just fine with my 1st gen Paperwhite.
My wife has a 2025 Colorsoft, gotta check how it behaves with that one.
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1st gen Paperwhite is in the list of devices losing support. DeDRM effectively neutered on it, since you will no longer be able to buy/rent books for it after May 20.
Yet another reason to buy dead tree books (Score:4, Insightful)
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You don't buy electronic copies, you rent them.
Well, speaking for myself - I may "rent" them but I also immediately decrypt them and store a local copy elsewhere.
I don't buy media I can't decrypt, one way or another.
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That's part of the reason they are discontinuing support for these devices. It's nearly impossible on the newer Kindles to backup your purchases. They really are just rentals. Hence I'll be spending no more money on Kindle from here on. It used to be Kindle plus audible was actually pretty fantastic and affordable and both were easy to decrypt and back up.
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Re:Yet another reason to buy dead tree books (Score:4)
Books are made to be rented. I don't understand the idea of ownership. I have given away 100% of the fiction books I've bought. I've used libraries countless times. We have a local book-swap hut down the road that gets used frequently.
Books are entertainment. There's no reason to own any one book. It's far more important to have a steady stream of them than to keep a single one through all eternity.
This is something the wife and I completely disagree on by the way. She actually turned one of our rooms into an actual library, wall to wall bookshelves completely full on all sides. The smell of the room is nice, but I see it as a pointless fire hazard for a room full of things she's read once and then put on a shelf.
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And because you don't, no one should, right?
If you are unable to read you may say that. Did you read to the end of my post?
I'm shocked your wife hasn't divorced your dumb ass, yet.
Why would she have, did you start reading from the beginning of my post?
Seriously you read something, my entire post clearly, but neither one of your points could logically exist if you understood my entire post, only if you read each sentence in complete isolation like an idiot. Try not doing that in future.
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But you know, I still have most of my college textbooks, still stored in the milk crates I stole from behind the dorm. I graduated in '83.
That is something I left out of my post. In another reply where I said a similar thing I was clear to specify *fiction* books. I still do have my college textbooks as well. They (along with other older books) still make for great reference material. I will likely gift a portion of them on when I retire, but for me they aren't even in a milk crate, they are on my shelf in my office.
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Books are made to be rented. I don't understand the idea of ownership. I have given away 100% of the fiction books I've bought. I've used libraries countless times. We have a local book-swap hut down the road that gets used frequently.
If you have given away books that you purchased, that is a gift. In your head, you may equate the money you paid as renting the book for a time, but try extending that model to, say, housing, where ownership and renting are well-established paradigms. If you pay a bunch of money to acquire a house, and then hand it off to someone else, that's not the same as paying rent for an apartment.
In the case of libraries: you don't own the books, you borrow them and return them. The library used taxpayer money
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Connect to what? My old Kindle connected via 3G. They'd have to rebuild the 3G cellular system to brick that. It will also connect via USB to allow access to its storage for side loading PDFs and open format compatible content. Since that requires no Amazon app, it will be fine. It still has many good years of life ahead of it.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
You can install linux on them. The hardware is pretty limited, but it will still be a good ereader, and can do more now too.
Re: Doesn't matter (Score:1)
Been trying to do that with my fire 8 for years.
It's been passed around to a couple of gurus, still a fire 8.
A friend gave me a 2024 fire 10. Gave it back to her for donation somewhere else. Won't see my sd card with my 80G library again. For the third time in 5 months
Pulled the sd card and it will go in the jar with the rest until I buy an android tablet I can root. Later this month.
Both kindles are headed for Goodwill.
I obviously won't miss them.
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I was talking about my kindle. Fire sticks are another matter. Good luck; I wouldn't have tried.
Re: Doesn't matter (Score:1)
I was talking about my fire tablets (8 inch, 10 inch).
You know, the color kindles.
In fairness, when they work, I haven't had any problems with formats (except pdf) and I use vlc for all my video and audio needs.
But randomly failing to read the sd card (top end SanDisk), requiring a reformat and recopying my library gets annoying, even if it's only every 3 months or so.
I'm sure the donated ones will be picked up cheap from Goodwill, and be used by someone more appreciative.
That's why I donate, not dispose.
14 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not always a fan of Amazon and their policies, but I gotta respect a 14 year support window for portable devices.
Re:14 years? (Score:5, Funny)
I bought some paper books from Amazon in 1998 and they still work like the day I bough them.
Excellent support after 28 years.
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Huh. Many of the paperbacks I bought in the 90s are yellowing and the paper is cracking. The paperbacks from the 70s that I 'inherited" from my siblings (when I moved away from my parents) are all in bad shape. Nothing against paper, but a single-minded "paper good, four legs bad" mindset is just as bad as the opposite single-minded view.
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This depends considerably on the paper. Acidic paper, widely used because it's cheap, oxidizes in a few decades and degrades as you have seen. Because of this, acid-free paper has become increasingly popular. Your newer books are in fact likely to last much better than the ones dating from the 20th century.
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I bought some paper books from Amazon in 1998 and they still work like the day I bough them.
How often do you read them? Not being snarky, I genuinely fail to understand the concept of owning books and keeping them. I read them then give them away. Often I trade them for other books which I read then pass on to the next owner.
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No, you don't. This isn't 14 years of support. This is sabotaging and crippling devices that could work until the parts fail after 14 years. Imagine if Ford or Subaru did this with used cars.
Re:14 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
And this tells me that you've never had to find replacement parts for a 25 year old car. I had a '95 motorcycle in the shop for an entire summer trying to get parts for the shaft drive.
Dedicated e-readers are generally designed to work closely with a particular company's servers, and keeping that code running is very expensive. I suppose they could let the code run without maintenance, so that it would either fail someday with zero warning (which people would complain about) or cause massive security issues (which people would complain about). I'd love eternal tablets that work forever with magical fairy dust, but in the real world, 14 years for a device with an expected 5-year lifespan is pretty damn good.
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My e-reader works with dick all servers, it plugs into stuff via USB and gets loaded that way. If I want to use a server it ties into my own calibre box.
medical Re:14 years? (Score:2)
This is probably about DRM (Score:2)
For the record, (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure the thought is that people will buy new Kindles - and I'm sure many people will, especially with the confusing way this news is being shared. But pre-2012 Kindles still work, just with no reason to buy books from Amazon. Seems stupid to me to turn away all the people that want to keep buying books but don't want to buy a new Kindle (and really there's several reasons to not, some of which might be accessibility issues for some people; for example they replaced the text-to-speech feature with a pitiful, cumbersome screen reader after they bought Audible), but I guess they're counting on people not being able to figure out they can keep using them.
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The the "download & transfer via USB" option on the Amazon website, I mean.
Once again, books are better (Score:4, Interesting)
You'll never see a publisher say, "Your book is more than ten years old. You can't use it because we say so."
Nor do you have to worry about a book being in the "wrong" format, or only available in select formats.
When you're done with a book you can freely give it to anyone you want without any third party being involved.
Books are just better.
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Books take up space. That doesn't make them better. My wife has a library in one room of the house. Wall to wall bookshelves of stored books, most of them read once and then added as kindling to really make sure the house goes up if there is a fire. It's a colossal waste of space but one area of our relationship where we haven't agreed on for 20 years.
There's less books in there than on my Kindle**.
I don't see the point of storing or keeping books. I own none. When I finish reading them I gift them to someo
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The most accurately named e-Reader (Score:2)
For longtime users wanting to take the opportunity to upgrade to newer Kindle hardware, Amazon will offer a 20 percent discount on new Kindle devices
Sure, after you set fire to my old device, you want me to buy another device you will originally set fire to. It's book burning by proxy.
Daily use but nasty patterns (Score:2)
I've been through a few Kindles, honestly would be surprised anything lasts that long. Mainly Kindle Unlimited is an amazing deal. But, if there was a better ereader that is light, book dimensions, e-ink and has big letters with similar library even if I have to pay for each book I would switch. The two main glaring issues besides KU being really addictive are: 1) DRM, and 2) absolutely miniscule system font size. They allow very large text font size, but the fonts used in the file list, UI, About this book
DRM as the motivation? (Score:2)
Amazon's DRM has changed a couple of times. If you want to get purchased content out of the Amazon eco-system, using an older Kindle is easiest. I suspect that's the only real motivation here.
We really need legislation around the client/server issues. There is no technical reason (other than DRM) to disable these devices. Similarly, game studios that choose to stop running servers for non-profit able games. What does it mean, to "purchase" a client that can be disabled st the whim of the producer?
Typical Amazon (Score:1)
Happy Earth Day (Score:2)
How Many Readers Will Go in a Landfill? (Score:2)
I find it hard to get upset about this. (Score:3)
I think what is missed here is that the device itself still works fine. You can download books to your computer and transfer via USB cable like always. The basic e-reader functionality is still there. What Amazon is pulling support for is all the services around it that made it more convenient to use- buying a book and having it delivered over the air to the kindle, and I presume the actually very useful method of emailing a book to an email address that behinds the scenes gets it delivered to your device.
I guess one point that I could see people being upset about is that they are in some sense losing access to books they already bought. That's not really entirely true, there is a kindle app and such, but its not the same. Even so, you do have the opportunity to download them all before they shut things off.
The hardware still works though, nothing is getting bricked.