User anger as Amazon ends support for some older Kindles

[6Foot2]

Link: User anger as Amazon ends support for some older Kindles - BBC News

 

Quote

Amazon has told owners it will soon stop supporting older Kindle models - a move which has left some users outraged.

 

In emails from the tech giant, affected users were thanked for being a "longtime Kindle customer" but told devices released during or before 2012 would no longer receive updates from 20 May.

 

The move will mean owners of older Kindles, including its earliest models such as the Kindle Touch and some Kindle Fire tablets, will be unable to download new e-books.

 

Amazon said it has supported affected models for years and their active users have been offered discounts to help "transition to newer devices", but some have criticised it for making up to two million devices "obsolete"...

 

[FN-GM]

14 years is a good run!

[jthompson]

Still have and use my Kindle 3, the one with a keyboard on it. It lost support yonks ago so now has WiFi off and I use Calibre to load it up with ebooks.

 

Do Amazon ebooks still have DRM on them?

[Rob_D]

12 minutes ago, jthompson said:

Do Amazon ebooks still have DRM on them?

 Depends on the author/publiser. Amazon leaves it up to them to have DRM turned on or off as they like. From what I've seen big/mainstream publishers probably wont. Smaller publishers/self pubbed authors might.

Back in January, Amazon made changes so that if the book is DRM free you can download epub or pdf versiosn. I can only immagine this had led to feiwer smaller publishers/self pubbed authors choosing to go DRM free.

[sigma]

Books are still supported.

[DrCheese]

1 hour ago, FN-GM said:

14 years is a good run!

Yeah...  I get why people are annoyed at them becoming bricks, but if you've had a £100 odd device for 14 years you've had a pretty good life out of it. 

[jthompson]

Maybe this means that there'll be lots of cheap ereader hardware heading to eBay. Assuming they can still be managed via Calibre, I might [gasp]... upgrade.

[penfold]

Is the limitation only being that you can't download directly to the kindle? I think mine lost support some time ago, but you can send to email and transfer it directly. At least that was the way I did it last year. To be honest, I was toying with the idea of getting a newer one with a direct light so I can read without the need for a night lamp, but the amount I read these days doesn't justify it to be honest.  I think mine is still working OK, but my eyes are not as good as they used to be and last time I used it I had to increase the size of the test which didn't look so good on an older device.

[FN-GM]

13 hours ago, DrCheese said:

I get why people are annoyed 

 

How many people are annoyed? Or is it just the press going OTT again?

[Norphy]

I absolutely expect that there are some annoyed and upset people with this change, but I also expect that the number they're talking about is tiny compared to the number of people using supported devices and that the press are doing thier usual "blowing things out of proportion" thing

[NorthernNoel]

For the tech minded I'm sure a jailbreak and KOreader will do what you need to keep it working. I did mine ages ago, have it linked up to Calibre-web and can add e-books from anywhere.

[psydii]

I wonder if its a crypto/cert thing. Can they do TLS1.3 or handle modern certificates?

[itskdog]

3 hours ago, NorthernNoel said:

For the tech minded I'm sure a jailbreak and KOreader will do what you need to keep it working. I did mine ages ago, have it linked up to Calibre-web and can add e-books from anywhere.

You'll definitely want to jailbreak, for as soon as it's factory reset it becomes a brick.