Quote:
Originally Posted by Propheous
If someone can clearly state to me exactly how the untethering and tethering works for the kindle I would be more then happy to wrap my brain around it.
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Here's how it works. I turn on my kindle, go to settings, click on "deregister". That's it. The books I have on my kindle stay there, nothing is deleted from my kindle, the books still work. You can not buy any books from the kindle until you re-register it (same as with nook). If you had bought books from Amazon, but they weren't actually on your kindle (just in your "archives" on the Amazon website), you can't access them, since you are now "untethered" as you say, from the account. But the books are still there on the Amazon website, in your account/archive, so if you re-register, you could get to those books again.
As an example, some people share an account with their mother, but don't want their mother to see the slutty books they read. So the person has two accounts - one that they share with their mother, and one that they use to purchase the slutty stuff. They can register the kindle to their slutty account, buy and download slutty books, then deregister (slutty books stay on the kindle) and re-register to their regular account (or just stay unregistered). That way when their mom looks at the archive (books purchased on that account and available to the mom's kindle), the slutty books aren't there.
Another example. Some parents also don't want their kid (who has their own kindle) to be able to buy books on the kindle, or see slutty or otherwise age-inappropriate books that the parent might have bought. So the parent registers the kid's kindle to the account, downloads appropriate books to the kid's kindle, and then deregisters it.
Final example. Let's say I have an acquaintance who also has a kindle and I want to give them a book I've bought. But I don't trust them enough with my 1-click payment method to have them share my Amazon kindle account (or maybe they like having their own account or whatever).
I can give anyone with a kindle any book I've purchased. All I have to do is enter their kindle's serial number on my "Manage your kindle" webpage to register it to my account, send the books to their kindle, and then deregister it. I don't have to give them any account info - no password, no credit card number, nothing. That book file will always work on their kindle.
So my point is that unregistering a kindle and/or registering it to a different account has benefits. On a nook, deregistering requires you to enter a credit card number for each book the next time you try to open it. It also deletes things like notes and bookmarks (as I read in the nook manual) and deletes some other preferences and settings. It is not a simple thing.
Deregistering and registering are things I might want to do NOW. Worrying about what will happen if Amazon ceases to exist AND my kindle breaks is something that would happen far in the future. I prefer convenience now rather than worrying about later (esp. since it's already possible to remove the DRM on kindle books. I wouldn't do this now, but if Amazon can no longer provide me with book files for a new device, I'd do it).