I have three kindle keyboards and two kindle touches. All are about to become useless. Is the 20% per owned device such that I can have a new kindle of my choice at 100% discount? That would be fair. If not, I’m out. I’ll read ebooks on third party hardware.

I ran into the same situation years ago with a Barnes & Noble Nook. Thankfully Cyanogenmod was still around and it was trivial to install it. Held on to it for years until at last the battery shit the bed.

None of the paper books I own seem to have suffered from a discontinuation of support from their manufacturer, although a few have suffered from loss of support from their spine.

Nor do they try and show me adverts, track my location, or feedback to the publisher what other books I have been reading.

And you can keep warm by using them as fuel.

Nor do any of my ebooks, which I read on my phone via a nice little app called AlReader.

And in an era where trains are crammed like sardines, and budget airlines constantly double down on the size of your luggage, it's nice to not have to deal with the extra weight and mass of a physical book!

And I can read in bed, with the background set to black and the brightness cranked down to about 5%; great for when I'm still wide awake while my partner's dreaming about being a tractor.

It's all horses for courses; I appreciate the advantages that physical books have, but ebooks have their own advantages too!

And you can be annoying as a paper book owner by butting in where you're not wanted

If you pick up your parrot, your wooden leg and eyepatch, and sail the seas, you will find that your kindle works just fine and you will actually save quite a lot of money. I suggest that you disable wifi before Amazon disables your kindle by remotely borking it.

Calibre will happily convert any new downloads to Old MOBI format to read on your older Kindle.

Although in order to use Calibre, you must first download the books to your computer, which is no longer possible from the Amazon website. The workaround is to install an *old* version of the Kindle app on your PC, which will allow the download.

An alternative method is to use an older Kindle device to transfer the books to Calibre.

And closing that loophole is probably a big part of the motivation for this action...

I expect older versions of the Kindle-for-PC app to be locked out in the near future as well.

To clarify, it's the remote Kindle store books you won't be able to download new ones, and if you reset the devices, you won't be able to download the old ones. The devices will still read things you copy onto them directly, so they can still be used in some ways. They don't require registration for that part, so you can reset them safely and still read files. Not that it makes Amazon's decision better, but the devices may be of more use than you expected.

You need to register your Kindle if you want to create Collections to group your books, so reset with caution. You can disable the Wifi once the Kindle has been registered.

And Amazon still updating 2013 Kindles ie. 13 years old is still great. No other manufacturer except Apple goes this far back. With Android you'd be lucky to get 5 years.

> All are about to become useless

Did you actually read the article?

As Reg readers know, nothing in tech lasts forever, and so from May 20, 2026, Amazon is "discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier," the company states in an email to customers today.

Affected hardware includes first and second-generation Kindle versions, as well as Kindle DX and DX Graphite, Kindle Keyboard, Kindle 4, Kindle Touch, Kindle 5 and Kindle Paperwhite 1st generation.

What does this mean for those customers? They can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices but won't be able to "purchase, borrow, or download additional books on them after that date," the email says.

"If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way."

So you can still use your devices, and you can even still sideload your own files onto them. You just can't download anything new onto them.

Which is a bit of a pain - and the potential bricking of the devices if you attempt to reset them at least as bothersome.

But it doesn't mean that they're instantly going to become useless, come May 20th.

Then too, Amazon has supported these devices for 14 years. And that's actually a pretty decent timespan in which to support a device.

It's certainly longer than that offered by Google (max seven years), Samsung (max seven years) or Apple (5-6 years of iOS upgrades, 7-8 for security patches) for their devices.

It's even better than the support Microsoft offered for Windows 10, their "OS to end all OSs"; support for that stopped after 10 years, with Microsoft grudgingly adding a year's extension when it turned out that people weren't that bothered about upgrading to Windows 11.

And I certainly can't think of any other commodity hardware which has anywhere near the same length of support. For instance, good luck upgrading the OS on a TV of that age!

TBH, I'd guess that this is more about the servers which talk to the Kindles, rather than the Kindles themselves; the cost of maintaining/upgrading/securing these is probably far in excess of any revenue that they'll be earning from the few people still clinging onto 14-year old hardware.

The core function of a Kindle device (i.e. the reason for purchasing it) is to download and read Kindle purchases in a convenient format. If users could choose to continue using their old Kindle but without updates, then there would not really be an issue. But this core function is being terminated for older devices.

Windows 10 users can continue to use Windows 10 but without security updates, if they choose and/or are allowed to. If Microsoft took the same approach as Amazon, then you would be able to read files previously saved on your Windows 10 PC, but not edit anything or add new ones when "support" ended.

The cost would be a rounding error on one minute worth of profits for this parasitic company.

Did you also read the article?

"If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way ."

That's one sentence

You can't use it if you deregister

Just use Calibre!

My wife has a Kindle Touch and she's never bought or downloaded a single book from Amazon.

It stays firmly offline too.

“… can't support old hardware with the latest software”

Yes it can. They just don’t want to or can’t be bothered. Why are they lying to their customers?

Technically, no they can't support older hardware with the latest software. Because the latest software was built without the support!

But, I get it. Even Linux, where all the distros pride themselves on supporting old hardware, is removing kernel support for Intel 486 CPUs. There comes a time when it's not worth it. But the answer then is to keep the OLD software, that DOES support the old hardware, available.

"and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle Store" until you don't.

You know that's coming next.

Are you really telling me that the hardware and software can't work together?

Remember BezosCorp doesn't have enough money and you must purchase new devices........

for him to buy all that ocean front real estate that has suddenly become available in the Persian Gulf thanks to his buddy Trump.

cynical? Moi? You betcha.

Have they changed the protocol that the kindles use to talk to Amazon servers or what ?

I'm so glad I bought a Barnes & Noble Nook instead.

Yes, despite that being obsoleted years ago it still does all that I want of it and it only cost me £30 new.

I use my older Andoid tablet with ebooks.com plus local library service apps and they all still work fine.

In these days of supposed environmental awareness, Bezos & Amazon should not be instantly turning working Kindle ebook readers and tablets into instant trash and that is an environmentally irresponsible thing to do.

Kindle sales must be down this quarter

Kindle Keyboard owner here - mine still works fine, and the battery still last weeks. I've had no contact from Amazon about it becoming unusable. And, I sign on to Amazon.ca fairly regularly, at least when waiting for a shipment. I'm *not* an Amazon Prime member, and I always choose the cheapest shipping method. Still messing around moving over to a new "mini" computer I got from them. Typing on a wireless keyboard/mouse combo (Logitech) which is my latest order from them.

Comments don't indicate that anyone has actually received a notification from Amazon. Has anyone on here? Email?

Nope, no email yet. Of course I haven't registered any of my Kindles with the mothership as I'm using Calibre since the first time I powered on the first one.

Yes I have a Kindle Keyboard (registered March 2011) and I've had the email.

Comments don't indicate that anyone has actually received a notification from Amazon. Has anyone on here? Email?

Nope, not yet. But good timing* given the battery life on my trusty old one is now 2 days, if I'm lucky.

*Although conspiracy mode might suggest the battery life shrunk with a software 'update', so wondered if that was a cunning plan to force hardware updates. Says a lot about trust in big tech when we stop believing in coincidences.

Obviously books have changed a lot since Gutenberg which is why Amazon needs to only support the new types of book.

Is it because the DRM has been popped on the older Kindles, allowing extraction of the unprotected content?

DRM doesn't protect content. The said content was never in any danger in the first place. What it does is _restrict_ the use of content.

What you meant, I think, was that the content can be extracted free from restriction. Which is only reasonable, considering you bought it.

and take this opportunity to get out of the awful Kindle prison. Buy a decent e-reader which doesn't require any on-line setup (Pocketbook for one, Kobo?), buy your e-books from wherever you like and manage them with whatever software you find best.

E-readers in general are extremely long-lived for tech items, it's insanity to be at the "mercy" of any corporation regarding your continued use of your own property.

What about being able to email our own .epub files to our aged devices? That's how I've been getting content to my beloved Kindle for some time now. Really good side-load for content that can be blagged from various low-cost options.

(I suspect I can predict the answer to my own question....)

USB file transfer will still work.

this is the reason I now use Libation, the arseholes.

It won't change anytime soon but this should be outlawed. It should be "We're no longer supporting the kit but he is a firmware update that will fully unlock it for you to do with as you wish".

I have a Kindle Voyage. The ONLY reason I have it is that it is the latest model that supports the Amazon Origami case - which I really like (the chinese copies are rubbish). I've ven bought spare Voyages which come with those cases (so I have 3 spare Voyages).

If I have to give up my Voyage, I will NOT be happy.

Has started recently that certain physics textbooks I've been after will only work on a desktop Kindle application and won't support the e-reader devices.

Has anyone jailbroken a kindle and put a different O/S or reader on it?

Just wondering.

Jailbreak yes, different reader yes, different O/S not really (you can't get rid of the KindleOS, only install things on top).

But of course you can run DOOM on it.

we're THIS close to having fridges that 'expire' and won't let you put food in them anymore.

Hobs that refuse to cook food after a certain date etc.