Got an Old Kindle? It Might Not Work Anymore

eeigenhombre about 4 hours ago 36 commentsRead Article on nytimes.com

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Discussion (36 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

overflowy•about 3 hours ago

Best thing I ever did with my Kindle was jailbreak it and install KOReader. Crazy that somebody needs to do that in order to truly own their device.

nokeya•about 1 hour ago

Just use Calibre to transfer books to the reader

disillusioned•about 2 hours ago

It 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 were otherwise using this device to give you money?

ndiddy•about 2 hours ago

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.

plorg•about 1 hour ago

It's more complicated than that. KFX was not encrypted differently than AZW, it's just a proprietary format that no one else supports (AZW being more or less MOBI with some tweaks). The DRM and the format get conflated because the same enthusiasts who want to strip DRM tend to want ebooks in an archivable, portable, standard format that was not achievable with KFX (no other ebook readers care to implement the kind of features it supports, and the way it works is antithetical to coverting it to the more conventional formats). You could still download and strip DRM in versions of Kindle for PC that pulled the KFX format. Only recently did it get to the point that versions of the app supported by the DeDRM plugins weren't allowed to download new books.

cogman10•about 2 hours ago

It seems weird that they couldn't simply ship a software update to support kfx. Is kfx decoded in hardware?

ndiddy•about 1 hour ago

They probably could do it in an update, but the devices where support has been dropped haven't had firmware updates in 7 years (and that was a certificate update, the last nontrivial update was over 10 years ago), so I guess they don't consider restarting firmware development to be worth it.

ravenstine•about 1 hour ago

Amazon can and already did this for my circa 2015 Kindle. I think it's just a lack of will to do so for devices even older than that.

thisoneisreal•about 2 hours ago

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.

gdulli•about 2 hours ago

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.

aidenn0•about 1 hour ago

There's a lot of moving parts here:

1. Competition is much lower in a lot of places.

2. Customers prioritize convenience and (perceived at least) low-prices over being treated well.

Look at airlines: Unless you happen to be traveling between two major airports, there will typically be at most 2 airlines with a reasonable schedule for the two endpoints, and most people will not pay $100 more for being treated like human beings over cattle.

themafia•about 1 hour ago

> Consumers don't practice agency

Customers can't practice agency when the markets are mostly monopolized or the products pass through a cartel first.

The moment a viable, cheaper and more convenient option appears, your customers will show you exactly how fickle they are.

neilv•44 minutes ago

> The company is offering a 20% discount that you can apply toward one of its new Kindle models,

Federal is complicated right now, but can state AGs step in, and make Amazon either continue to support the old devices, or provide comparable free replacement devices?

andyvanosdale•35 minutes ago

Can they, yes. Just about anyone can be used for just about anything.

Should they, no. Why should Amazon continuously support, checks notes... 14 year old devices??? Likely the number of customers using a device like that anymore is super small.

thewhitetulip•31 minutes ago

Unlikely. Kindles are e readers that last a long time. I have a 10yr old paperwhite as good as new!

snailmailman•10 minutes ago

how well does the battery hold up after that long?

Mine is only like 2-3 years old and I charge it so rarely. I can read several entire books on a charge easily. It lasts months. I imagine even if the battery degraded significantly it would be quite usable.

beej71•about 2 hours ago

I 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.

ndiddy•about 2 hours ago

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.

Cider9986•about 2 hours ago

I think you can disable the Over the Air Updates.

shell0x•about 1 hour ago

I’m thinking to get a device for reading technical books. Do you think an iPad mini would be the better option? I had a kindle before but it was slow to change pages and I heard even new versions are still not great for PDFs, but would like to get some opinions.

I have a friend at Apple so wouldn’t pay the full price for an iPad.

elorant•about 1 hour ago

I'd go with an iPad instead of the mini just to be on the safe side. I have a 12" tablet and it's night and day compared to my 6" Kindle (2020 model). Kindles suck if you try to read pdfs, they don't scale naturally so you can't see shit. Anything with a screen at 10" or more would work fine for pdfs.

shell0x•about 1 hour ago

i guess that would be an iPaid air as it just got refreshed?

secabeen•about 1 hour ago

Probably just the iPad, unless you are not at all price sensitive. $350 ($299 refurbished) vs $600 is a big uplift; you can almost buy two iPads for the price of an iPad Air. For just PDF viewing, any Apple CPU is performant enough.

frio•42 minutes ago

If you want an e-ink type screen, the Supernotes (or Remarkables, or Viwoods) are all very good at this. Personally I hate trying to read things on iPads.

crims0n•about 1 hour ago

> Earlier this week, Amazon notified its customers via email that, starting May 20, it will end support for Kindle and Kindle Fire devices released in 2012 or earlier.

14 years of support really isn't bad at all.

heyalexhsu•4 minutes ago

ya. compared to an iphone that normally gets 5-7 years.

0x38B•about 2 hours ago

I 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!

ekropotin•about 1 hour ago

Why just don’t send books on the email associated with your kindle?

internet2000•about 3 hours ago

> If you own one of the affected Kindles, you’ll still be able to access all of the books that are already downloaded to your device. However, you’ll no longer be able to purchase, borrow, or download books to your device from the Kindle Store.

> And while you can sideload DRM-free (digital rights management–free) titles to the Kindle via USB [...], it’s not the best option from a security standpoint.

What a terrible article.

Cider9986•about 2 hours ago

As much as I am a fan of annas-archive, Zlibrary Koreader Plugin[1] makes a bargain I can't refuse.

[1] https://github.com/ZlibraryKO/zlibrary.koplugin

II2II•about 2 hours ago

They said that it affected less than 3% of Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets. I wonder how that number would change if they only considered Kindle e-readers? I suspect that the disposability of tablets distorts that number significantly.

ChrisArchitect•about 2 hours ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678320

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47690049

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47747330

LandenLove•about 2 hours ago

Unrelated 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.

micromacrofoot•about 3 hours ago

you can still transfer over usb, which should be the bare minimum for eol hardware support... this isn't as bad as it seems on the surface

joe_guy•about 2 hours ago

Can you transfer your new Kindle book purchases to it?

beej71•about 2 hours ago

If they have DRM the answer is almost certainly no.