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Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

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Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#141

Bad, but anyone sideloading would skip Kindles anyway for a long time now for much better products.

I only use eInk to read at the beach or pool. I am still happily using a Kindle 3G. That’s an old, old model, but it still works and it has physical page turn buttons. Too old to work with the Kindle store even over WiFi. But sideloading works just fine, and I always have a laptop on vacation. As long as I have 3-4 books ready each day I’ll never be caught short. Download, strip DRM if desired, sideload.

Now I suppose it will just be Anna and me doing the sideload.

Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#143
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not suggesting it as a good option but does the Kindle app on Windows and macOS not work with these devices?

Nope. Kindle for PC can't send books to devices.

Elsewhere here and Reddit it seems the trick is to use the Kindle app plus Calibre.

Good luck with it.

Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't buy Kindles for the hardware. They buy Kindles because they work with a store that has the books they want to buy (and the hardware is good enough and cheap enough). Without data I believe that more than 99% of ereader users have no idea what a MOBI or ePub file is and have never attempted to manually move a file onto their device. Instead, they go to a digital book store, click "buy", and content appear…

The alternative I see mentioned here is kobo. I haven't used/owned a kindle so I don't know what amazon do better than the kobo store. I can say that I've bought over 50 books on the kobo store, can't recall a single instance of it not having a book I wanted.

Another reason people (e.g., my mother in law) buy kindles is that the price of ebooks is very often much less from Amazon than from the Kobo store. My mother in law wants to be like us and so she recently bought a kobo. But then she bought herself a new kindle as well simply so she can buy cheaper books and then transfer them (which she hasn’t figured out how to do, and which according to this thread will no longer be possible).

Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#145
As of this writing I can still connect my kindle and then read the kfx file with Calibre and then convert it to azw3 or epub (with the dedrm plugin).

Should I loose every way to backup my books, then probably I'd use tesseract, puppeteer and their cloud reader to re-ocr the books (it's better than nothing). Also note that the country I live in, libraries have no ebooks. Kobo drm is another nuisance.

Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#146
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what DRM is for . Same as the region locking in DVDs. It is about segmenting markets, preventing competition and ensuring that the publishers can sell the same content over and over again.

Yes I know, my point was that not pirating is not helping to remove DRM from the world as the OP was suggesting.

Agree, my comment was for the room.

Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#147

I bought a Pocketbook after Amazon started nagging too much about connecting to the wifi. Would recommend.

Pocketbook is a solid choice. I've been very happy with my Pocketbok Inkpad Color 3 - their free cloud offering is great for transferring my ebooks around and their send-to feature is also great. I've never trusted the Kindle jail but in my various trials with eink devices, I've come to appreciate the clean experience that Pocketbook currently offers.

Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#148
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kobo is definitely superior to Kindle in my book. The hardware is great and it's completely open to sideloading and even modding (it runs Linux under the hood). I can't speak to their digital bookstore but they integrate with Overdrive for library borrowing.

besides books, which you can sideload very simply with kindle, what do you need to sideload to your e-reader

There are a few alternative e-reading applications. KOReader and Plato are both under active development. KOReader is great at reading PDF documents on e-ink screens, has nicer options for accessing Wikipedia articles, has useful options for tracking reading progress (e.g. you can see which pages you have read, which is useful while jumping around technical books), and generally goes overboard in giving you control over how a book is formatted. I have also seen random applications make their way to the Kobo, and some people use Kobo's for their own programming projects.

Another benefit is the ability to sideload software without jailbreaking it. I'm not going to say it is easy, since you need to know a bit about Unix to package your own software for sideloading (verses something that someone else packaged for you), but at least you can do it using trusted applications (rather than downloading something from a random third-party).

Re: Kindle is removing download and transfer option on Feb 26th

#149
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Kindle for PC can't send books to devices.

Elsewhere here and Reddit it seems the trick is to use the Kindle app plus Calibre. Good luck with it.

Yes, but this is a different method. Using the encrypted books downloaded by the app for PC viewing.

Right now they use an old version of the app though, that can easily be blocked by Amazon. I'm surprised it wasn't.

The good thing about the download option on the web was that some older Kindles don't support any newer DRM methods so it would always work.

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