Amazon is “discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier”
And here’s my Sony PRS-505 from 2008 - released four years earlier - it still works fine, can read .epub and .pdf, is extendable to 32GB capacity by two memory cards and moddable with a custom Linux distribution (PRS Plus).
It also doesn’t have WiFi, so no one can remotely delete 1984 from your library. Fuck you, Amazon.
Absolutely jealous of that, I have a touchpad one but yours is antique beauty
I absolutely love this thing. It’s a solid block of metal and will probably live longer than me. It chokes on ePubs with embedded fonts sometimes (64MB of memory is not a lot), but with Calibre you can strip them out and then they all work fine.
I did not know this thing existed lol. I have an older Kindle, not sure when I got it but it’s gotta be close to 10 years old. I didn’t read the article yet but it still works as far as I’m aware. I primarily use it for loading PDFs and epubs and the like.
Since it’s Sony I have to ask: are the memory cards normal standard ones or some proprietary discontinued Sony crap?
There is one SD card slot and one MemoryStick slot.
Anyone who takes them up on their offer to buy a new Kindle should check themselves in for a mental health screening.
They just told all of their customers that you cannot trust a device you buy from them will continue to work in the future. So buy one from a different manufacturer and hope they aren’t as evil
I get that it may be expensive to perpetually support old devices but there is surely a middle ground between supporting them and bricking them.
Even if you have a large library on kindle I hope you have the ‘calibre’ to move devices.
I used to have a kindle and it would periodically lock up and I’d have to do a hard reset and then re-download all my books. It was extremely frustrating. I finally got tired of it and ditched ti for a Kobo Clara. Whats nice about the Kobo is that it doesn’t have all the janky DRM bullshit, and it just works. You can load up books or pdfs from any source. So much happier now!
Back in about 2010-ish? One of the first “amazon deletes your book remotely” events happened. They removed a Kindle version of 1984 from people’s readers.
I don’t know how much irony fits into an irony singularity, but Amazon is trying to make the most irony ever.
Users are fucking dumb. They’ll buy new ones and throw the usual “what else could I do?” bullshit, further encouraging companies to do this shit and ruin tech for everybody.
Jailbroke my old Kindle, and disabled updates. It’s way better now. With the custom reader, I can just connect it straight to Calibre and copy books over via WiFi with no bother. Disabled ads and have custom screensavers too.
If anyone has an old Kindle, and is upset about this, I’d suggest to have a look to see if yours can be jailbroken.
How old does the kindle need to be?
According to this page, you can jailbreak Kindles going all the way back to the first generation. The older you go the less features may be available to you, however definitely have a look at your model number there.\
There seems to be a firmware version that is incompatible, however that page should provide some more information about it.
Thanks!
Good thing I bought mine, never connected it to the internet, and only added my own books to it manually with calibre. This won’t effect me one but. Fuck Amazon.
As Reg readers know, nothing in tech lasts forever
lol. I’m using a 2016 Samsung Galaxy Tab as my e-reader. I fully expect the pirated epub files I use on it to be readable until I am dead. It is never connected to the Internet, never updated, never anything except a USB connection to move over more books.
For context if it matters: I have purchased every book on it in physical form. I download epubs of these books so I can carry my library with me anywhere I go and I feel no guilt about this whatsoever - largely because of BULLSHIT like this article.
If I break somebody’s property, I’m on the hook.
How come if Amazon breaks my property, they’re not on the hook? They should be sending new devices out to all the people they fucked over.
