The optimist in me says they’re doing this to avoid piracy.
The pessimist in me says they’re doing this so they can purge books because of the Trump administration.
Either way, I can’t say I’m a fan.
Por que no Los dos?
You will own nothing and like it!
The optimist in me says they’re doing this to avoid piracy.
Won’t pirates just buy their source copies on a different platform, so now Amazon loses the original sale as well?
both seem just as terrible to me
Absurd. Glad I have a Kobo.
Yep. Not to gloat, but I never touched Amazon’s ebook marketplace.
My current e-reader is a second-hand Kindle that has a permanent message asking if I would just please connect to a WiFi network just one time just for a moment PLEEEEEASE.
I get my books from libgen, Gutenberg, or Kobo, and keep them on my computer. They’re organized in Calibre, and I transfer them over on a USB cable.
I know I switched ages ago but I’ve never managed to port my existing library of ebooks off the kindle
Do you want help?
It’s been a while since I tried it but from memory I had managed to extract the device keys from my kindle for DeDRM and then it wouldn’t decrypt the files with them
The guide the other user commented looks pretty good, better than the one i followed. lol
If you run into issues let us know.
I switched to Kobo a few years and couldn’t be happier. I hated supporting Amazon.
deleted by creator
Wow, I just bought it last year before they discontinued it then. Interesting that only colour screens are available now. It must mean that they are at least as good though? Edit: after reading reviews, apparently not… that sucks.
deleted by creator
At least I’m hoping that there’ll still be a spectrum of both BW and color screens available. Apparently many seem to like/prefer colour screen, and the screen door effect and worse contrast doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people. Some even prefer the more textured look of the screen door effect, though I don’t know myself as I’ve never tried a colour screen. Either way, I’d be hesitant to try one, and as I kept my Kobo Aura One for like 7 years it’ll be quite some time before I upgrade my current Kobo Libra 2. If I have some spare cash I might be inclined to try a colour e-reader as an alternative to my current one, but it’s not high on my priority list.
But yeah, it definitely seems that Kobo is pushing their colour screens as they’re only selling the Libra in colour now. Might be that they release a B/W once the hype dies out a bit though.
The Kobo Clara Color’s screen doesn’t look any different to me with non-color eBooks than their non-color version. The only thing that’s really different is that the book cover you see when it’s powered off is in color. Now I will admit that e-ink color is not very good, but it doesn’t ruin the experience of reading just a regular book.
deleted by creator
I’m farsighted and have an astigmatism, so I have to read with glasses, and maybe that’s the issue, but I just held my Clara really close to my face and I don’t notice any screen door effect.
deleted by creator
Just swapped to a Libra Colour last month and I’m feeling better about the choice every day
Ugh, thanks for the warning. Time for me to download and de-drm all my old kindle books and never again buy anymore.
This is why you never connect your kindle to the internet. Calibre forever
This doesn’t track.
To pull my books into calibre, I need to first download them onto the Kindle, which requires wifi.
My kindle has been on airplane mode for years and I read new books all the time with it, but hey, whatever works for you
I sure am glad I got a Kobo for myself for Xmas and ripped all my books to it. Guess I’ll be recycling my Kindle for good.
If your model accepts a custom OS, some of them make decent e-ink displays for weather, family photos, etc. Things look good in the black and white ones especially.
Yeah I’ve actually thought about doing that and making it an office desk calendar or something. Thanks for reminding me!
I just got a Kobo color (don’t recommend the color feature; no book is ever going to use it except the red-letter Bible and House of Leaves) and gifted the old Kindle to a friend. I e-reader is an awesome gift actually because for a lot of people it’s something they would never evenly in years take a chance on, but that they would love it if they tried.
Interesting that you don’t recommend Kobo Color. I was thinking of gifting my mother a kobo but I might just go for a BW version.
To be quite honest I never allowed my Kindle or my Kobo to go online and the experience is not that different. The build quality on the Kindle is a bit better superior and I might well go back. Calibre is the real hero of the story IMO.
Look to whom you are giving the money. That is a very important part of the whole story.
It’s semi-decent for comics if you massage them a bit
That’s interesting. What kind of massage are you talking about here?
Answered in the sibling, but this basically: https://github.com/ciromattia/kcc
Thank you!
The color might make more sense if you’re into manga or graphical novels as opposed to just ebooks
Do yourself a favour, switch to Kobo or a third party ereader… Especially if you’re not in the US.
A whole new generation of the Kobo readers just came out too!
I’ve got one of the previous Gen and I was so happy to find they have models with the clicky buttons to turn the page.
Yeah I got the libra colour and it’s really great for the buttons. Didn’t really care about the colour part but the regular one was out of stock when I got it so I just went with it and I’m finding I enjoy it a lot. Especially when I read picture books for mt kid’s bedtime
Yup, I’ve had my Kobo for quite a while now and I still love it. The push buttons are great, as pointed out by another poster, but also… I’ve just never had any issues with it. None whatsoever. I’m hoping this one will just never brick.
About a month after I got mine, I bought the exact same one for my husband and he says his is still working like a charm as well! Now to be fair, I had never owned any other e-readers so I can’t really compare it to anything, but quality-wise I’d say they’re really good.
Why “especially if you’re not i the US”?
I’m not in the US, and switched to kobo a couple of years ago, but i’ve had to keep buying books from amazon, sine the kobo store is just realy bad (missing a lot of books, even popular once), and there are few others who offer ebooks here.
The quality of the devices seem not the greatest either.
Bought a kobo libra first and it lasted just long enough for the warranty to expire before it just fully died. Replaced it with a kobo libra colour, and had to replace it three times before I got one that didn’t have pin holes on the screen where light shone through.
Meanwhile my 9 year old kindle oasis works just fine, it has just gotten slow and the battery is worse, which is why I replaced it with kobo.
Because supporting the US economy from outside of it right now is ludicrous and Amazon is a union busting mega corporation that destroy local economies…
Now, I’m not a Kobo corporate shill, I don’t care which device you get, I did say there are other ereaders you can get, pick whatever you want. You don’t care about thr trade wars, you can get a Nook or Remarkable. You care but don’t like Kobo? You can buy an Onyx or another Chinese brand. You can use your phone, an old tablet whatever you want.
Personally, I’ve never not found a book on kobo but if it happened and it wasn’t at my library, I’d find alternative to buying on amazon, I’d get it physical or find other ways to get it.
You want to continue using amazon products and contribute to the success of Bezos and his billionaire friends, that’s your prerogative but a lot of us are not ready to do that for the sole sake of minor convenience.
You know I am starting to think going to the library is a better idea than buying their products. You can literally just walk in.
That’s why I don’t download or purchase ebooks from Amazon, but only get them from places I can download a non-DRM’d copy. I’m not looking to break any laws, but if I pay for it, I want to be able to have it whenever I want even when the Internet is down. Recently a buddy gave me his old blu-ray juke box, and now I’m doing the same thing with my favorite movies as well. And building a home lab. It’s finally time I decreased (not completely ended) my reliance on the cloud, given the shit show my nation collectively voted for.
I think it’s worth noting that the bigger issue here might not be the drm, but the access Amazon has into your device. Regardless if you can download ‘another’ version of the book or not (that is something you can find out for yourself relatively quickly) there is no reason it should be considered ok for the company to insist that it can connect to a device you own and modify the contents of it. Even with ownership of the books being a topic, certainly there should be little questions of whether you own the device, and along with that being able to control access to it.
Surely there is something in the user agreement that states accessing the download functionality also grants Amazon permission to go in and claw back things they’ve uploaded to the device, but i think that should be at least half the argument. Restrict whatever they want up front, I’ve downloaded it to my device and they consider that a fair exchange for my money, but to then say they screwed up on their end so they’re taking it back (assumedly without giving up the money they made as part of the agreement) is where things should be breaking.
Where do you usually go to find the DRM free books? Sometimes for new books I am unable to purchase a copy without any sort of DRM
My wife borrows a lot of ebooks from our library, which are delivered to a kindle through Amazon. I’ve used this USB download option to remove the DRM from some of those borrowed books. Guess I’ll have to figure out a new approach now…
I pirate everything. Because fuck you that’s why.
resist.
Stop buying whatever it is that Amazon/Meta/Google/Etc sell. They will not stand for you. They will not respect you.
At some points, it may seem like they changed and that they are now good. They are not. They will never be. Resist them.
The only surprising thing about this is that the functionality existed in the first place.
early models didn’t have wifi, only usb or cellular from one provider or another–and those models’ 3g connectivity was killed off years ago.
this will obsolete all the non-wifi kindles still in use.
You can still use calibre to sideload onto them. Where you get the books is another issue.
So it just obsoletes them for the model users that buy ebooks from Amazon and put them on their Amazon device without conversion in between. Even though this user group should be Amazon’s favourites.
lol, lmao even.
The specific devices impacted by this are pretty old (I think only the first and second gen ones? So at latest 2009), so honestly I doubt they’re very worried about it.
Yeah the companies obsoleting stuff are never worried about cutting off customers anyway. Fuck em.
I mean, I agree with this. I have a kindle and had no idea you could directly connect it to download books. Guess I learned my new thing for the day.
Knew this would happen
Makes it harder to pirate or share, so more profit with the benefit of censorship. They could make updates to material on the fly if they wanted. Assuming you need an Internet connection, no privacy and limits where you can read. It’s hard because you can’t avoid things like AWS but you can stop paying them directly. Sadly, even now, it’s hard to convince people to give up on Amazon and similar corps.
I’m quite glad that I never bought fully into Kindle/Nook/Kobo and instead went with an eInk Android tablet.
Kobo connected to calibre web is the ultimate freedom/privacy ereader
Kobo and Nook ebooks are still ePUB and easy enough to free from their DRM.
Technically, official Kobo books are KEPUB, which is their own proprietary version of EPUB they use for their store, but they can read EPUB and other formats just fine. And if they don’t, Calibre solves that problem.
(Converting books to KEPUB is sometimes worth it, especially if they have illustrations mixed in with the text, because then you are able to do things more easily like zoom in to the image on the reader.)
Which model did you end up with? Do you like it?
I went with a Box Note Air 3C, and it’s great. I hear the new model is basically the same but faster.
Crap, I’ve had a Kindle for years, I’m still pissed at them over Dash buttons - instead of just stopping support they changed their setup site so it would bricked them. I still have half a dozen uninitialized ones I can never use now. Fuck you, Bezos, and the giant stick up your ass you rode in on.
Have to check if this means I can only read while online now, or if I can just turn off networking and keep the books I already have.
Definitely switch to alternatives from Amazon. They treat their authors abhorrently too. I’ve personally been super happy with libro.fm for Audiobooks (essentially Audible, but you can download the audiobooks DRM-free)
