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Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

28 points by cf100clunk 4 days ago | 22 comments

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.

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

bananaflag 2 hours ago

Joke's on them, I keep the Kindle permanently on airplane mode anyway.

cbdevidal 5 minutes ago

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.

moffkalast 8 minutes ago

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.

comboy 21 minutes ago

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.

cryptoz 13 minutes ago

Some wild irony is they once forcefully removed purchased copies of 1984 from Kindles while people were reading it.

kyranjamie 35 minutes ago

My 14 year old Kindle functions so perfectly I've no desire to upgrade. This is exactly why KOReader and all the jailbreaks exist.

onidj 57 minutes ago

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.

fodkodrasz 32 minutes ago

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...

kuboble 42 minutes ago

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.

IshKebab 25 minutes ago

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.

madarco 51 minutes ago

Actually, the old Kindle had physical buttons, which I find more ergonomic when reading in bed

gruturo 27 minutes ago

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)

arikrahman 18 minutes ago

Glad I went the Kobo route. Koreader beats Kindle any day of the week.

ajdegol 6 minutes ago

The price of convenience.

prvc 2 hours ago

>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?

kuboble 44 minutes ago

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.

wrxd 14 minutes ago

Less fair when they sold an integrated device and store

dev_l1x_be 2 hours ago

Deadwood loyalists raise an eyebrow and keep reading.

burner420042 15 minutes ago

There I go

Turn the page

Weryj 18 minutes ago

If only there was a way to download e-books and upload them to a Kindle with Calibre.