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Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

reuters.com

41–50 of 344 posts

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#42

Joke's on them, I keep the Kindle permanently on airplane mode anyway.

The first time I got an ad on mine I did that and switched to the Calibre + z-library workflow. It's been most of a decade since. It's like people have to be taught the same lesson about SAAS over and over and over again. Like what did they expect, to not get rug pulled eventually? Crazy. You own your shit or you don't. Simple as.

You paid for the ads-supported version if you got ads...

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#43
post #6
post #5

Having used an early kindle and a recent kindle, they are incredibly similar. One of the main innovations of the new models appears to be adverts you have to pay to get rid of.

Actually, the old Kindle had physical buttons, which I find more ergonomic when reading in bed

Really wish my 1st gen Paperweight had split forward and back buttons on the right side.

But then I also understand that'd increase the price by 10% and only help right handed people with weak hands so... c'est la vie.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#44
post #7
post #3

>Amazon said it had supported the devices for 14 years or more and could not keep doing so indefinitely. "Technology has come a long way in that time," said a spokesperson. Wasn't the original concept of the Kindle that it shouldn't need to be replaced by newer models?

I can and will still use mine to read files. What is discontinued is integration with Amazon account. Which seems fair to me to be fair.

It'd be fair if they unlocked them.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#45
post #15

If only there was a way to download e-books and upload them to a Kindle with Calibre.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there is! I've jailbroken my Kindle Scribe and installed coreader and feed it my Calibre library and its awesome. Oh and i kept it in airplane mode from the first day, which is important so it doesnt self update and break the jailbreak.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#47

Crap like this is why I 1.) export my Kindle books to plain PDF 2.) use a Nook Simple Touch. They work perfectly well 100% offline and are CHEAP now. Primarily use two of these for a prepper book cache. (Two is one and one is none.) The battery lasts about a month on low cost chargers, and a pair of 32GB SD cards holds my entire collection. (A redundant pair since two is one.) Whole thing sits in an EMP bag in the bu…

PDF is an atrocious format for this though. Why not export to ePub?

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#48
Excuse me, but I am not sure what to make of people who:

- use Chrome, by Google, a company earning money with selling ads and wonder why the adblocker is not working

- use Kindle, by Amazon, a company that earns money by renting out DRM-protected content, that sees the Kindle just as a vehicle to (1) sell more of that content and (2) as a vehicle to lock you to their platform

Please for the love of the universe, just start to factor in the incentives a company has when selling you a thing. Before buying my Kobo reader 12 years ago (still going strong!), the first thing I researched is how to get out of Amazon DRM hell. The answer is: get a reader by a company that sells readers as a main business and has an incentive to make sure they work and use it together with something like Calibre, so you have all your books if you lose the thing somewhere. If you're going to the powerful quasi-monopolist, that may be cheaper in the short term, but what about the time you lose when they eventually hold your whole library hostage or decide to drop support on something you relied on? You're not the person picking when that happens.

If I sum up how much I spent on books in 12 years that Kobo has paid for itself 50 times over and I still don't think there is any reason to replace it with something newer.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#49

I’ve been looking into getting an e-reader, but I’m scared to get one from Amazon due to things like this. Are there any decent hackable and/or trustworthy ones out there?

There are Android e-Readers, like Boox, but that does not imply it is easy to do fun stuff. Seems pretty locked down. I have a PocketBook myself, no complaints there and you can install software (at least I can on the one I have but it is a few years old now) and thus never had the need to hack the thing.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#50
Tip: if you let kids and others in your home use a Kindle and they might unintentionally turn off the airplane mode ...

Go to your router settings and blacklist the Kindle's mac id.

Sleep peacefully that your kindle will never be bricked or wiped by a software update.

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