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Not buying another Kindle

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Re: Not buying another Kindle

#41

Post by com2kid »

georgeecollins wrote: post #3
laweijfmvo wrote: post #2

> Amazon recently confirmed that starting May 20, these older models will lose all access to the Kindle Store. While you can technically keep reading books already on the device, the real kicker is the factory reset limitation built into the software. If you ever need to reset your device or try to register it to a new account after the deadline, it becomes a literal paperweight. is this true though? You can't browse…

You won't be able to read library books on it after it resets (which it will eventually) unless you jail break it. My son jail break'd his kindle so I guess its not too hard and you can read library books that way.

I got an android based epaper device and installed Libby on it. Overall it is a much better experience than doing the library to Kindle dance. I can just browse my local library's ebook collection on device and immediately open them in one tap.

Battery life standby time isn't nearly as good, but being able to also read Notion pages, review full PDFs, and other benefits from having an actual tablet, make the battery life sacrifice worth it.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#42

Post by alfanick »

grimgrin wrote: post #10

the only bit of the service i cared about was mailing my kindle address mobis/epubs (even the mobile kindle app receives these) today i use a boox page, after a friend complimented his https://shop.boox.com/products/page

Why do those devices need 3GB RAM and 8-core CPU if they well, show books? There is no hurry there. Give us full-blown terminal and ssh/mosh at least.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#43

Post by chocochunks »

johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

Support here is pretty loose. These devices were already not supported in the traditional sense. They were not getting firmware updates, they were just allowed to continue using Amazon's DRM scheme and connect to the store.

AFAIK it's still possible to authorize ancient supported ePub readers with Adobe Digital Editions and load up DRMed books from providers like Google Play even with devices like the Sony PRS-505 (e.g,https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/reader-digital-book...), despite them exiting the market over a decade ago. Kobo also has continued providing firmware updates to devices from 2011, and even their unsupported devices can still load books via ADE or the Kobo Desktop App.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#44

Post by jm4 »

Saris wrote: post #25

I use one because of kindle unlimited, it's nice to have a big selection of books I can just hit 'read' on right on the kindle store. I don't know if the alternative e-readers have an equivalent store? Tracking down epub files on my PC then transferring to the device multiple times a week sounds a bit frustrating as an alternative. Also they support kindles for a long time, my kindle oasis from 2016 that I bought use…

Kobo has an equivalent to Kindle Unlimited (as well as a good store). It also integrates directly with Overdrive so you can download free library books directly to your device. I recently switched to one and it's superior in just about every way.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#45

Post by WorldMaker »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #23
johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

What's also not mentioned is that the discontinued devices don't support KFX. KFX is the modern kindle format, AZW meanwhile is heavily PDF-based. KFX was designed ground-up by Amazon, supports every modern feature they could think of, and presumably couldn't be backported to 2013 and earlier Kindles; AZW meanwhile was basically a wrapper around a subset of PDF. KFX is a complete redo, notable enough it's what "Enhan…

The original AZW format was MOBI-based, not PDF-based. MOBI originally from a company called MobiPocket, which Amazon eventually acquired, was built to be an ePub competitor and like ePub was an HTML and JS-based solution, but in a somewhat different, proprietary DRM-friendlier container format. (ePub is "just" a ZIP file, with the DRM applied sometimes inside the container rather than outside it.)

MOBI stopped keeping up with ePub standards and standard features, in part because Amazon acquired MobiPocket. The KFX is just ePub with a new proprietary DRM container around the ZIP file that is ePub's container.

The 2013 boundary is also the "supports ePUB files directly without a conversion process" boundary in Amazon's kindle OS. It's not just useful to know for book file authors, but as a consumer it becomes useful for a quick "Can I buy a standards compliant DRM-free EPUBs such as from sites like DriveThruFiction and just send them to my Kindle with no other steps?"

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#46

Post by jmyeet »

lokar wrote: post #24
andrewla wrote: post #17

In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

It's hard to evaluate the cost of a ebook vs physical book without knowing the cut that the author and publisher get of the sales price.

Sure you can.

An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen.

A physical book has to be typeset, printed, shipped to stores, shipped to customers, marketed in store, etc etc etc.

If a physical book is sold for $10 at least half that is printing, distribution and retail.

Like the GP, the price fixing of ebooks at the Dane price as physical books mothers me as well, particularly because physical books can be sold, lent or given away.

The exact same thing happened when CDs launched. They were cheaper to produce than vinyl or cassette very quickly but they sold at a premium for no reason at all.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#47

Post by chasil »

johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

Buy something that runs the latest LineageOS, and use the Kindle app.

If you want greater security, substitute Graphene for Lineage.

These will not be e-ink displays, but the longevity is perhaps the longest available from independent vendors.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#48

Post by fmajid »

johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

Usually an unsupported device stops getting new functionality and security fixes. The unsupported Kindles lose existing functionality, i.e. the ability to add books. Not quite bricked unlike, say, Sonos, but you are limited to the books y already downloaded to them.

This is inherent to DRM, and the reason why I would never have considered buying one in the first place. The eReader I have is a PocketBook Versa. Same price as a Kindle, extensible using microSD and I can add my non-DRM books however I want. Fortunately, Apple Books ePub FairPlay DRM is fairly easy to remove, so that's where I buy them.

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#49

Post by delecti »

andrewla wrote: post #17

In my view the death of the eReader is just the price fixing on ebooks -- that ebooks are sold at par with at a premium to physical books still bothers me, and I think is responsible for the fact that the Kindle is dying -- Amazon can't move enough ebooks at these price levels to be worth investing anything in interested new hardware.

Is the Kindle dying? A cursory check suggests otherwise. Checking the sources on the "Sales" section of Wikipedia, they sold $5bn of devices in 2014 [0], and then hit a decade-long high in 2024 [1]. Now that's much to go on, and could easily have been worded carefully to imply things that aren't true. But at worst it seems like Kindle sales are doing fine. At a ballpark of $200/device, and assuming 2024 is as low as 2014, that means they sold a ballpark of 25 million devices in 2024. The percent of people reading ebooks annually is also increasing [2] (albeit slowly; arguably it's actually flat, but that's still not dying).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Sales

[0] https://allthingsd.com/20130812/amazon-to-sell-4-5-billion-w...

[1] https://tech.yahoo.com/phones/articles/amazon-unveils-kindle...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/01/06/three-in-...

Edit: also MSRP on ebooks is lower than for print versions (very roughly 50%, based on a couple randomly checked books)

Re: Not buying another Kindle

#50

Post by Aeolun »

fmajid wrote: post #48
johngossman wrote: post #8

I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.

Usually an unsupported device stops getting new functionality and security fixes. The unsupported Kindles lose existing functionality, i.e. the ability to add books. Not quite bricked unlike, say, Sonos, but you are limited to the books y already downloaded to them. This is inherent to DRM, and the reason why I would never have considered buying one in the first place. The eReader I have is a PocketBook Versa. Same p…

Wait, wut? How would they stop me from adding new book to my kindle? I can just plug into USB and load directly right?
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