Hacks what can be done with an non-registered kindle 3?

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Tiersten

Okay. Give me a good reason why you don't want to? Excluding the inability due to the blacklist or because you're on a boat in the middle of nowhere and therefore have no GSM or WiFi access.

If you're worried about Amazon identifying you then there is nothing stopping you from making a brand new Amazon account that only your Kindle registered to it. You don't even need to give real details. Mr A.N. Onymous may feel the need to register a webmail account and then create a Amazon account to register their Kindle.

I have no interest in registering my Kindle, and I'm curious what can be done with and to the Kindle beyond the basic functions that are limited by Amazon. I bought the device and would like to know what I can do with it without any registration. There is no need for me to justify that decision to you, and there is no need for the original poster to do so either. I understand exactly what registration is and how it works, and I do not want to do it. The original post in this thread was of interest as it seemed a nice way for unregistered owners to see what workarounds might exist for them specifically, and what needs no workaround at all.

[Tiersten]

The circumvention of the registration is only a sore point if you're trying to get around the blacklist. In this case, you should talk to Kindle CS.

If you're doing it for personal reasons like you don't want to have even a throwaway Amazon account then I'm fine with that but as such, you're on your own as I've never looked into how to do that. The majority of other users won't have experience of doing this either.

You need to be aware that you're modifying the Kindle software and that carries certain risks in the actual procedure and the possibility that it will break in the future due to a firmware update. The easy and safe option is just to register a throwaway account that never gets used for anything except this initial registration. You'll get all the benefits of registration but no downsides I can see.

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

I understand exactly what registration is and how it works, and I do not want to do it.

Not everybody understand the registration system and what is limited without it. Not everybody has the skills or inclination to hack the Kindle to remove these limitations.

It is perfectly valid to ask the OP why they don't want to register. I've seen posts before where people have had unregistered Kindles and wondered why collections don't work. They never saw the need to register at the time so they didn't bother. Once they knew that collections was one of the features enabled then they registered with no complaints at all. Just telling them to hack the Kindle to work around the registration requirement would not have been a good idea.

If you understand the risks and work involved then you can do whatever you want with the Kindle. Recommending people modify their Kindles to get around the restrictions without clarifying that it would all work with no problems once they registered is just going to cause problems in the future. All the hacks and modifications should only be applied if the user understands the risks and implications for the Kindle and the support process from Amazon.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I don't think thee is anything wrong with the original question. The Kindle 3 is among the most advanced hardware for reading and it is also relatively inexpensive. So if you want nothing to do with the Amazon or the Kindle ebook store, what can you do with a Kindle? You can buy it in stores now don't forget.

One thing you can do is run FBreader & fbKindle on it. I currently run OpenInkPot on a Hanlin V3 with FBReader, and a Kindle + fbKindle might be the next generation of "open" ebook reader.

Thanks for the FBreader/fbKindle link. I have used Duokan occasionally, but it still needs a lot more work and polish before I'll use regularly. I tried FBReader on my PC and found it a little crude too, but it might be interesting to investigate.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Tiersten

If you understand the risks and work involved then you can do whatever you want with the Kindle. Recommending people modify their Kindles to get around the restrictions without clarifying that it would all work with no problems once they registered is just going to cause problems in the future. All the hacks and modifications should only be applied if the user understands the risks and implications for the Kindle and the support process from Amazon.

And the first poster did not ask how to get collections and was not curious bout why some features were not working. They clearly asked what could be done with an unregistered Kindle. I took that to mean both by default and by modification, but all without registering, whatever their reasoning may be. There was no mention of blacklisting or anything to suggest that registration was impossible or that there was some kind of problem with their account.

I guess I did not make the jumps in logic to arrive at the conclusion that they were somehow ignorant about registration.

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

And the first poster did not ask how to get collections and was not curious bout why some features were not working. They clearly asked what could be done with an unregistered Kindle. I took that to mean both by default and by modification, but all without registering, whatever their reasoning may be. There was no mention of blacklisting or anything to suggest that registration was impossible or that there was some kind of problem with their account.

I guess I did not make the jumps in logic to arrive at the conclusion that they were somehow ignorant about registration.

The vast majority of questions regarding registration are about collections. The benefits of registering far outweigh any downsides which I can't actually see any but anyway, thats based on your own opinions on that one.

As always, the recommended route is to register it and not mess with the Kindle internals unless you're 100% confident that you can do the modifications without breaking it. I don't know you, the OP or any of the potential readers of this thread so I can't make that judgement on your skill level and won't give the recommendation to hack it.

I'm sorry that we actually tried to shorten the process but you're more than welcome to help out every single person that comes here asking about it and give them detailed guides on registering or hacking it along with providing support for any issues that come up from the hacking or in the future.

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by charonme

- jailbreak should work
- collections can be made to work
- reading of pdf, mobi, html, doc, txt should work

Huh? Kindles can read doc and html files now? When did that happen?

[charonme]

catsittingstill, thank you for the correction. I assumed k3 supports doc and html from The Matrix, but here they say doc and html must be converted, so no, K3 probably doesn't support them - although theoretically the web browser must be able to read html somehow, althought maybe not locally. I'll correct my post.

[TheKindleWorm]

Originally Posted by catsittingstill

Huh? Kindles can read doc and html files now? When did that happen?

Yes you have to send them to your Kindle via your Kindle email address - you can't just place them on your Kindle as they won't be readable that way. With html files I read that you can change the extension to .txt and then place on your kindle and the formatting will still be there. However I've not tried this.

[charonme]

LDBoblo, thanks for confirming that the web browser works. Is any hacking needed or it works out of the box? Does it still use the amazon proxy or it connects directly to any web page you want?

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by charonme

LDBoblo, thanks for confirming that the web browser works. Is any hacking needed or it works out of the box? Does it still use the amazon proxy or it connects directly to any web page you want?

I used it without any modding in firmware 3.0.2, and it didn't have to go through any proxy that I'm aware of. I only used it for Wikipedia, but that worked fine, including the article view.

The interface isn't really good for the browser, so I haven't been too motivated to play with it. However, it does seem to work.

[charonme]

you say you use 3.0.2 so I assume firmware updates work on never registered K3s (how?) Or have you already got your K3 with that firmware on it?

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by charonme

you say you use 3.0.2 so I assume firmware updates work on never registered K3s (how?) Or have you already got your K3 with that firmware on it?

3.0.2 came with it, but I was able to go to Amazon and download the K3 3.0.3 update here and update it manually too.

[charonme]

cool, thanks, so I'm adding the possibility to update the fw

[Tiersten]

Originally Posted by charonme

cool, thanks, so I'm adding the possibility to update the fw

It should still be able to do an OTA update even unregistered since the Kindle can/will still connect to Amazon. You don't need to do a manual update unless you want to try the preview releases or you don't want to wait since Amazon push out the updates in big batches.