Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers
43 points
3 days ago
| 20 comments
| reuters.com
| HN
A_D_E_P_T
37 minutes ago
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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.)

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albert_e
4 minutes ago
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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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comboy
1 hour ago
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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.

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cryptoz
1 hour ago
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Some wild irony is they once forcefully removed purchased copies of 1984 from Kindles while people were reading it.
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_Microft
1 hour ago
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“The books will stop working”, discussed 7 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331

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WithinReason
1 hour ago
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Just got an xteink x4 and flashed crosspoint on it, I've been tuning fonts by modifying the font generator and now it renders great.

https://www.xteink.com/products/xteink-x4

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dabeeeenster
52 minutes ago
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Love my x4! I saw 1.3 allows you to bring in your own fonts - any suggestions?
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bananaflag
2 hours ago
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Joke's on them, I keep the Kindle permanently on airplane mode anyway.
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cbdevidal
1 hour ago
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Not sure if you’re joking but is it possible to even do that? I understand some books are kept on their cloud servers and only some get downloaded.
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thih9
49 minutes ago
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Yes, it’s possible. Note: no downloads work in airplane mode. Cable works just as well though.
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iLoveOncall
48 minutes ago
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No, you choose what is downloaded locally. You can also get .mobi files and copy them to the kindle directly.
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moffkalast
1 hour ago
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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.

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iLoveOncall
21 minutes ago
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You paid for the ads-supported version if you got ads...
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kyranjamie
1 hour ago
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My 14 year old Kindle functions so perfectly I've no desire to upgrade. This is exactly why KOReader and all the jailbreaks exist.
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CGamesPlay
1 hour ago
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14 years support window is so insanely good. But as it goes...

You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.

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azalemeth
45 minutes ago
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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.

Planned obsolescence is always bad.

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generic92034
47 minutes ago
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Maybe for ebook readers, but not for books.
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onidj
2 hours ago
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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.
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fodkodrasz
1 hour ago
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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...

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kuboble
1 hour ago
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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.

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IshKebab
1 hour ago
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I have a similar one and I never bothered to pay to get rid of the ads or keep it in aeroplane mode.

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.

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madarco
1 hour ago
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Actually, the old Kindle had physical buttons, which I find more ergonomic when reading in bed
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literalAardvark
20 minutes ago
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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.

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gruturo
1 hour ago
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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)
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cbdevidal
57 minutes ago
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Same here. I read your comment from two inches away lol
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arikrahman
1 hour ago
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Glad I went the Kobo route. Koreader beats Kindle any day of the week.
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dennismd
22 minutes ago
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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?
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theiz
8 minutes ago
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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.
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wedg_
35 minutes ago
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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?

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rag-hav
27 minutes ago
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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.
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bobmarleybiceps
28 minutes ago
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is the kobo store not good/convenient compared to kindle? I thought the kobo store was pretty good, but it is my first and only e-reader.
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Den_VR
32 minutes ago
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Inversely, try to use a kindle as a Korean.
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prvc
2 hours ago
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>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?

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kuboble
1 hour ago
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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.

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wrxd
1 hour ago
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Less fair when they sold an integrated device and store
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literalAardvark
20 minutes ago
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It'd be fair if they unlocked them.
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periphery
19 minutes ago
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Brought a Kobo after Amazon locked my account. There is no going back to a Kindle.
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dev_l1x_be
2 hours ago
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Deadwood loyalists raise an eyebrow and keep reading.
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burner420042
1 hour ago
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There I go

Turn the page

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echelon_musk
25 minutes ago
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On the road again
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thih9
52 minutes ago
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My kindle will not be aware of it. It has been in airplane mode ever since I bought it.

Its clock no longer tells correct time; but it’s fine, a book doesn’t have to do that - and I have a watch.

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cbdevidal
59 minutes ago
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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:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Calibre/comments/1q1uza4/successful...

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literalAardvark
19 minutes ago
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PDF is an atrocious format for this though. Why not export to ePub?
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majorbugger
50 minutes ago
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Two of my paperwhites died so i took the opportunity to switch to kobo and couldn't be happier.
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atoav
17 minutes ago
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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.

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ajdegol
1 hour ago
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The price of convenience.
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Weryj
1 hour ago
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If only there was a way to download e-books and upload them to a Kindle with Calibre.
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lagrange77
20 minutes ago
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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.
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