alt Hacker NewsI can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.
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I feel the same way. To be honest I'm on my third kindle, their life-span seems to be about five years for me.
I don't love having to replace them, but paying €120 every five years is probably worth it. I mean that's €2/month, and I have a huge library of books which I load via calibre.
I read daily, on the bus to work, at home in bed, and while there are "more free" ereaders I've become accustomed to the kindle and have no complaints. If I were not so clumsy they'd last longer, so that's on me.
My physical library is pretty big, but being able to carry 50+ books at all times? And have a battery life of a few weeks? (I stay in airplane mode, as I transfer books via the USB cable). It's hard to complain.
> I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years.
I don't have that faith either, but it still irks me when good hardware has to get chucked for software reasons. And this goes double for when those software reasons are about stupid-ass DRM.
But in this particular instance I don't consider it to be that bad for me personally, since I don't rely on being able to access Amazon DRM books. But a lot of perfectly working devices are going to get landfilled for this.
The Kobo Glo, released in 2012, is still getting updates to the latest Kobo firmware version.
In fact all Kobo e-ink devices, except the Kobo Mini, wifi, and the original one, are still getting firmware updates.
Their android-based tablets with IPS screens are all discontinued though (as far as I am aware).
This is more than Amazon ever did. They haven't updated the firmware on some of their devices that are officially "supported" in years.
Not the same thing. Those old devices are essentially being bricked. You will no longer be able to sign into them.
Amazon is offering a 20% discount to owners of those devices to switch to any other modern kindle.
Support here is pretty loose. These devices were already not supported in the traditional sense. They were not getting firmware updates, they were just allowed to continue using Amazon's DRM scheme and connect to the store.
AFAIK it's still possible to authorize ancient supported ePub readers with Adobe Digital Editions and load up DRMed books from providers like Google Play even with devices like the Sony PRS-505 (e.g,https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/reader-digital-book...), despite them exiting the market over a decade ago. Kobo also has continued providing firmware updates to devices from 2011, and even their unsupported devices can still load books via ADE or the Kobo Desktop App.
reMarkable is doing a decent job, their first generation device launched in 2017. Still getting updates. It is discontinued for sale, but there is no reason to believe reMarkable will stop updating their other devices if they're _still_ updating a device they don't even sell anymore.
On top of that, their aftermarket and open source situation is pretty good.
They're not ideal e-readers though, but if you're in the market for a good e-ink device with long-term support and that works well with calibre? Might be worth a look.
My typewriter has been successfully serviced 45 years after being produced.
True, but most manufacturers don't go out of their way to break their old devices. Neglect is one thing, this feels more like theft.
Buy something that runs the latest LineageOS, and use the Kindle app.
If you want greater security, substitute Graphene for Lineage.
These will not be e-ink displays, but the longevity is perhaps the longest available from independent vendors.
I can still read my decade old books
What's also not mentioned is that the discontinued devices don't support KFX.
KFX is the modern kindle format, AZW meanwhile is heavily PDF-based. KFX was designed ground-up by Amazon, supports every modern feature they could think of, and presumably couldn't be backported to 2013 and earlier Kindles; AZW meanwhile was basically a wrapper around a subset of PDF. KFX is a complete redo, notable enough it's what "Enhanced Typesetting" on every Kindle product page means, not a small DRM upgrade.
By doing this, all authors will soon receive guarantees that they will have the full KFX feature set when designing eBooks, and won't break AZW by accident. Trying to point this out though to the "it's about DRM" or "it's about obsolescence" crowd will get you downvoted to oblivion before the truth is even considered (speaking from experience, -4 when I dared suggest legitimate reasons exist) and is a prime example of echo chambers and deeply ingrained bias on this forum.
Usually an unsupported device stops getting new functionality and security fixes. The unsupported Kindles lose existing functionality, i.e. the ability to add books. Not quite bricked unlike, say, Sonos, but you are limited to the books y already downloaded to them.
This is inherent to DRM, and the reason why I would never have considered buying one in the first place. The eReader I have is a PocketBook Versa. Same price as a Kindle, extensible using microSD and I can add my non-DRM books however I want. Fortunately, Apple Books ePub FairPlay DRM is fairly easy to remove, so that's where I buy them.