As much as I am a fan of annas-archive, Zlibrary Koreader Plugin[1] makes a bargain I can't refuse.
Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#12I transfer books by running `python -m http.server` on my phone or computer, then opening my Kindle’s browser to my IP and downloading my .mobi book. It doesn’t take long, and I can do it all over Wi-Fi.
I can mount it via SSHFS for anything more than copying a single book.
I stopped buying anything from Amazon on principal a couple years ago, books included; and anyway, most books I read these days are in the public domain – Project Gutenberg is a treasure trove!
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#13It seems absurd to me that Amazon is making the product decision to EOL functional hardware that is _actively used to purchase books from them, legally_... all to... what? potentially sell another $100 or so reader? At the expense of... what? Some minimal amount of engineering effort to keep updates flowing for the extremely limited surface area that is the old Kindle OS? Why upset your customers over this when they…
Bought a Kobo and decided I'm just going to stick to Ebooks.com DRM-free section from now on. Tired of not owning what I buy.
I did the same with music, using an Innioasis iPod knockoff + buy MP3s from Amazon Music, cheaper than Spotify and I never have to worry about my music becoming unavailable. I also prefer the experience of single-use devices.
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#14[deleted]
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#15It seems absurd to me that Amazon is making the product decision to EOL functional hardware that is _actively used to purchase books from them, legally_... all to... what? potentially sell another $100 or so reader? At the expense of... what? Some minimal amount of engineering effort to keep updates flowing for the extremely limited surface area that is the old Kindle OS? Why upset your customers over this when they…
You're an ant to them. All that data they have tells them this action won't hurt them.
An incredibly important turning point of this era is that businesses have learned that they no longer need to fear acting hostile to consumers. Consumers don't practice agency.
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#16It seems absurd to me that Amazon is making the product decision to EOL functional hardware that is _actively used to purchase books from them, legally_... all to... what? potentially sell another $100 or so reader? At the expense of... what? Some minimal amount of engineering effort to keep updates flowing for the extremely limited surface area that is the old Kindle OS? Why upset your customers over this when they…
The actual reason is likely that all of these Kindles only support azw3 format ebooks, which are easy to strip the DRM from. This lets Amazon switch to only serving ebooks in kfx format, which are encrypted and harder to strip the DRM from. Amazon stopped allowing saving ebooks to your PC last year, likely for the same reason.
It definitely is frustrating though. I have an iPod from 2009 where the battery and hard drive still work fine, and I'm able to use the latest version of iTunes to sync my music and podcasts to it. Shoutout to Apple for that.
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#17Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#18Unrelated to the article, but the sticky AI prompt at the top of this page is infuriating. I've added the element to my ublock filter.
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#19It seems absurd to me that Amazon is making the product decision to EOL functional hardware that is _actively used to purchase books from them, legally_... all to... what? potentially sell another $100 or so reader? At the expense of... what? Some minimal amount of engineering effort to keep updates flowing for the extremely limited surface area that is the old Kindle OS? Why upset your customers over this when they…
The actual reason is likely that all of these Kindles only support azw3 format ebooks, which are easy to strip the DRM from. This lets Amazon switch to only serving ebooks in kfx format, which are encrypted and harder to strip the DRM from. Amazon stopped allowing saving ebooks to your PC last year, likely for the same reason. It definitely is frustrating though. I have an iPod from 2009 where the battery and hard dr…
It seems weird that they couldn't simply ship a software update to support kfx. Is kfx decoded in hardware?
Re: Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore
#20I just jailbroke my old Kindle 4 for fun. Found out of it ever connects to WiFi it unjailbrakes itself. :) The email Amazon sent out said that if you factory reset your device after May 20 it becomes inoperable. I wonder if that means bricked, or if it just means you can't access your DRM kindle library.
You will still be able to use it if you factory reset, but you won't be able to register it to an Amazon account or download any of your DRM'd book purchases. The Kindle will still work and you'll still be able to read books you load over USB. The one annoyance is there's a nag pop-up telling you to register your Kindle, but it only shows up in the main menu and not when you're in a book.