Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

This closes the DRM hole in Kindle. The newer Kindle DRM formats have been robust, but the old DX reader AWZ format was hacked ages ago. Anyone with an old device could download their books in the old DRM, and strip it with DeDRM. But those downloads will end in May.

If you have a decent library at Kindle and want a DRM-free copy, I'd download it now.

Meanwhile Kobo is still shipping firmware updates to devices from the same time period...

And even the ePub readers that have been left behind can still work with new books.

The Kindle hardware is great, but the software and ecosystem are just crap, and Amazon is making it shittier every year.

I've now moved to an Android eReader (Boox Note 7, for example [1]).

I can just get the Ebook or PDF files and transfer them via Calibre, simple as that, and I can also download any Android app i want. There are tons of apps out there that support eInk screens.

[1] https://shop.boox.com/products/go7

Side tangent: I’m the developer of Kindle Comic Converter. Kindle updates 5.19.2+ have completely broken the sideloaded manga reader with bugs like huge margins, pages being on the wrong side in 2 page landscape mode, no panel view, no % read tracker, and laggy page turns. I’ve documented the problems here and the first report was 50 days ago. https://youtu.be/Eo6K7omlE7g

And I haven’t even touched all the problems with normal sideloaded books like broken embedded/publisher fonts.

Kindle settings > help > contact us > email if you want to voice complaints.

Jailbreak and repurpose as an e-paper dashboard? I have two kindles used this way. https://github.com/usetrmnl/terminus

https://github.com/usetrmnl/trmnl-koreader

(I built the koreader plugin)

Bought a Kindle because it was the cheapest ereader I could find. Amazon heavily subsidised it.

Joke's on them I've never bought a book from the Amazon store! It takes a few minutes to drop files on it via USB.

I wanted to upgrade to the new Paperwhite. Went through three of them with permanently lit pixels right in the middle of the screen until I gave up. Seems the quality control on these e-ink screens is really slipping. Meanwhile all the competitors are either selling the same old hardware from years ago, an Android tablet with an e-ink screen strapped to it, or color models that just have worse text rendering. My 2013 Paperwhite keeps soldiering on.

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

Could this help? https://uk.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D56Q00009ipZmHSAU/can...

After all the kindle is a hard disk with a nice screen.

This is why having the actual pdf is better, if you can't have it offline you don't own it digitally, if you can't give it to another person or copy it or modify it then you don't own it to it simply attached to your account even with offline access.

Would be cool to be able to search this, I'm not a LOTR expert. But I wanted to search for the Valar island as i have no way of knowing where it is. The islands I clicked on didn't seem to be it.

I really wish the Libby app worked with devices other than Kindle. I got a Kindle because I wanted to check out eBooks from the library and read them on an eInk screen.