I was about to complain that my Paperwhite only lasts a couple of days between charges (it shuts down when battery drops to ~50%) but then realized that I've had it 7-8 years. No Indian heat here though, I'm in the UK.
So their inhouse AI which they are forcing all their devs on is not capable of figuring out how to render what is basically the equivalent of an .md onto the older Kindles?
Amazon's attitude towards its Kindle device customers is one of lofty disregard.
Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I hope they have buttons," "I hope they bring back the Oasis," etc.
But they appear to exult in dashing the hopes of their customers, or at the very least they don't care about them at all. They've doubled down on no-key devices with stupid pens, pointless and poorly-implemented color, and tiny or excessively large form factors with little in between. It's kind of crazy just how much they don't seem to care.
The subtext of the article indicates that the problem isn't discontinuing support alone, but discontinuing support without offering those customers a reasonable replacement for their old devices that had keys and buttons. (Even if it's just a couple of buttons.)
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.
Also gradually phasing out support of formats like mobi, in such subtle ways that if you open a mobi file you cannot go back to the library, but have to cold-reboot your device...
My current kindle is my third one, and is the last. I will never ever pay for a kindle to Amazon, due to its user hostility.
Oh, and also you cannot move ebooks between accounts, even not with a lot of friction, eg. support tickets, which would be a fair way to game piracy and unwanted lending, which was some inconvinience for me in a situation. Not a huge monetary loss for me, rather a reminder that when you pay to Amazon (or Valve, or any other contemporary DRM-burdened vendor) you are only leasing...
My kindle from 2012 used to have ads you needed to pay for to get rid of. It was sold as separate product with or without ads at a time. I had one with ads.
I keep it offline in airplane mode permanently from 2016 and haven't seen a single ad in a long long time.
You'll get a new ad if you take it online again, but they only persist for about a month or so before falling back to the generic 'read books' amazon ad.
I have my 2016 one setup without a password so when I open my cover the device unlocks, so I never really even see the ad unless I try.
> The ads are only shown while it's off, they're static black and white images, and 99% of the time they're for books. Totally unobjectionable
Speak for yourself. Aside from the principle, some of us don’t want to be advertised to in the comfort of our own home/bed/while we’re camping or whatever. Ads don’t have to be actively flashing, spaz-inducing insanity to be objectionable.
Not to mention that by definition an ad like this WILL be seen and attended to, even if only momentarily. That in itself is also objectionable.
That's what your nose is for. (I'm quite skilled at advancing or going back by gently tapping the kindle against my face. It helps that I'm very nearsighted so it's kind of already there)
I gave up on Kindles long ago. They wake up and drain their batteries, so they're always dead when I pick them up to read something. Not a problem with Kobo. But I really want to pick up one of these little Xteink readers next. They just seem perfect for pulling out of a pocket and reading. Also, I'm a smaller person, and they look like they would fit my hand. Modern phones feel like tablets to me.
I guess I've never been strongly compelled to ditch mine. It sits there next to my bed. I pick it up and read it every night. Every few weeks I remember that you have to actually charge it. My last Kindle started malfunctioning after about 8 years of constant use. I opened a chat with Amazon support and they gave me a 50% coupon off the current version. That was two years ago and I'm still using it.
I do get the argument about lockdown. And there's some mediums I feel more strongly in that area. I suppose Amazon just has me exactly where they want me :)
I was looking for a good rationalization to leave the ecosystem, one-click e-books is great and having old device that I can take anywhere not caring about it getting beaten up even more was another major advantage.
Removing some old book I had was the first major red flag.
My local library has some dead tree format books with a 500 year support window. Or dead animal or dead reed format books with more like a 2000-year support window.
Unless they are very popular books, they will be weeded (thrown out or or sold) in a matter of a few years though. People imagine that libraries are infinite storehouses of material, but except for places like the Library of Congress they really aren't. There is limited storage space, and in order to get new books they need to discard the old ones that were rarely checked out. Even the example of old books on parchment aren't immune to this trend -- the books we have from Ancient Greece or Rome are just the really popular ones that were copied over and over again, and the vast majority of works from those times are lost.
I think the bigger issue is that there's market segments that old product reached and that newer ones don't... and you are locked into their devices by the content you've "bought."
14 year support window is pretty good. Not being able to get a modern device with buttons, and having no way to read your books with buttons, isn't.
>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?
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.
I have a Kindle which I think is surviving this purge. But after looking at alternatives like the Kobo, I wondered where people got their books?
Ofc there's the high seas, but I'd quite like to support the authors and I can afford ~£10 for a book now and then. But are there any stores as good/convenient as the Amazon one?
I buy the books of my favorite authors on kindle store, while sailing the high seas to read the books on my Kobo. I don't buy all the books I read though.
I was in the market to buy a new E-Reader since my old Kindle started to act funny (Random shutdowns while reading and it won't come back for several minutes).
After the announcement I decided to switch to physical books
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?
Kobo's devices let you bypass the account signup via a single option in a config file. Whether you do so or not it's easy to install koreader and start writing plugins for it. You can also hack on the linux OS they use
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.
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 bugout bag of my car, so I always have my library everywhere I go.
Exporting to PDF used to be pretty straightforward; the newest encryption is a lot harder to bypass but is still possible:
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.
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.
Kindles last a month on a charge or two. It's very light. It's affordable.
It doesn’t show colors, but I have an android tab to read papers and technical content, anyway.
I tried looking at alternatives, but low price + extreme power efficiency + being able to sideload books is just great.
Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I hope they have buttons," "I hope they bring back the Oasis," etc.
But they appear to exult in dashing the hopes of their customers, or at the very least they don't care about them at all. They've doubled down on no-key devices with stupid pens, pointless and poorly-implemented color, and tiny or excessively large form factors with little in between. It's kind of crazy just how much they don't seem to care.
The subtext of the article indicates that the problem isn't discontinuing support alone, but discontinuing support without offering those customers a reasonable replacement for their old devices that had keys and buttons. (Even if it's just a couple of buttons.)
My current kindle is my third one, and is the last. I will never ever pay for a kindle to Amazon, due to its user hostility.
Oh, and also you cannot move ebooks between accounts, even not with a lot of friction, eg. support tickets, which would be a fair way to game piracy and unwanted lending, which was some inconvinience for me in a situation. Not a huge monetary loss for me, rather a reminder that when you pay to Amazon (or Valve, or any other contemporary DRM-burdened vendor) you are only leasing...
I keep it offline in airplane mode permanently from 2016 and haven't seen a single ad in a long long time.
I have my 2016 one setup without a password so when I open my cover the device unlocks, so I never really even see the ad unless I try.
The ads are only shown while it's off, they're static black and white images, and 99% of the time they're for books. Totally unobjectionable.
If they were in the actual UI and for stuff like cars and perfume I might mind, but they aren't so I never cared.
Speak for yourself. Aside from the principle, some of us don’t want to be advertised to in the comfort of our own home/bed/while we’re camping or whatever. Ads don’t have to be actively flashing, spaz-inducing insanity to be objectionable.
Not to mention that by definition an ad like this WILL be seen and attended to, even if only momentarily. That in itself is also objectionable.
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.
https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x4
The only missing feature is a backlight for reading at night.
I do get the argument about lockdown. And there's some mediums I feel more strongly in that area. I suppose Amazon just has me exactly where they want me :)
Removing some old book I had was the first major red flag.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331
https://kindlemodding.org/
You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.
Planned obsolescence is always bad.
14 year support window is pretty good. Not being able to get a modern device with buttons, and having no way to read your books with buttons, isn't.
Wasn't the original concept of the Kindle that it shouldn't need to be replaced by newer models?
What is discontinued is integration with Amazon account. Which seems fair to me to be fair.
Its clock no longer tells correct time; but it’s fine, a book doesn’t have to do that - and I have a watch.
Turn the page
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.
Damn near impossible to find DRM free books to purchase though.
My method has always been to buy physical books (which is also better to support the author, because they get a bigger % of the price you pay.
And then, there are other creative ways to download the ebook... (without buying from Amazon, or other monopolists.)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1q1uza4/successful...
If publishers/authors want my money, they can release a version without DRM.
Calibre web and calibre web automated downloader remove a fair bit of the clunk.
Ironically, files downloaded from "other" sources have no issue. So they're just making it harder to buy from Amazon legally.
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.
For some reason, they're inclined to trust Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Kindle/dp/B0CNVCQZG1/
This is the first one that pops up if you search "kindle" on Amazon.
I'm not sure how more clearly you could show the variants with and without ads.
Ofc there's the high seas, but I'd quite like to support the authors and I can afford ~£10 for a book now and then. But are there any stores as good/convenient as the Amazon one?
After the announcement I decided to switch to physical books
Been super happy with my Kobo Clara.
It’s not too disgusting, and over-the-air is nice to have.
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 bugout bag of my car, so I always have my library everywhere I go.
Exporting to PDF used to be pretty straightforward; the newest encryption is a lot harder to bypass but is still possible:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1q1uza4/successful...
- 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.