Amazon discontinuing support for older Kindles in May

[Regina]

2G was a good excuse to kill some very old non touch devices. Now, TLS deprecation is a good reason to kill all mobi only devices

[Regina]

Kindle is now following the mobile way. Force people to upgrade their kindles by killing old device revisions. Sure the idea would have come from sales team to increase sales and acknowledged by customer support team to get rid of hard work load :-P

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Regina

Kindle is now following the mobile way. Force people to upgrade their kindles by killing old device revisions. Sure the idea would have come from sales team to increase sales and acknowledged by customer support team to get rid of hard work load :-P

The main reason was almost certainly the closing of the DRM removal loophole. Any other factors are probably only supportive ones.

[frostymug]

So Send to Kindle still works with discontinued Kindles. That won't help me. If I buy a new book on Amazon it will be in KFX format and have DRM. Now what? Send to Kindle only works with a variety of document formats to convert them to a Kindle format and deliver them. KFX isn't one of those formats. I can't very well convert it to Epub in order to then use Send to Kindle to convert it to some Kindle format and then send it to my Kindle. If I had the Epub I would put that in Calibre and convert to AZW3. Send to Kindle is for DRM free books you have but need to convert to a Kindle format.

Sorry if I came across as grouchy. You probably weren't claiming to address my issue. It's great that those older Kindles still get the Send to Kindle service.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by frostymug

So Send to Kindle still works with discontinued Kindles. That won't help me. If I buy a new book on Amazon it will be in KFX format and have DRM. Now what? Send to Kindle only works with a variety of document formats to convert them to a Kindle format and deliver them. KFX isn't one of those formats. I can't very well convert it to Epub in order to then use Send to Kindle to convert it to some Kindle format and then send it to my Kindle. If I had the Epub I would put that in Calibre and convert to AZW3. Send to Kindle is for DRM free books you have but need to convert to a Kindle format.

The solution is to not buy any more eBooks from Amazon and buy from shops such as Kobo, eBooks.com, and Google where you can remove the DRM.

[vermontcathy]

Originally Posted by frostymug

So Send to Kindle still works with discontinued Kindles. That won't help me. If I buy a new book on Amazon it will be in KFX format and have DRM. Now what? Send to Kindle only works with a variety of document formats to convert them to a Kindle format and deliver them. KFX isn't one of those formats. I can't very well convert it to Epub in order to then use Send to Kindle to convert it to some Kindle format and then send it to my Kindle. If I had the Epub I would put that in Calibre and convert to AZW3. Send to Kindle is for DRM free books you have but need to convert to a Kindle format.

It's true, it won't help you with new books you buy from Amazon.

[frostymug]

Yeah, thanks everyone. I'm just an old man yelling at clouds at this point. I'll get better eventually.

[Josieb1]

I have some 77p pre orders at Amazon, I don’t mind that as I am watching to see how long I can get downloads via my Voyage and Oasis. I can always cancel pre orders before release day if both devices hit the KFX Zip

[Quoth]

I think you can get a refund on a Kindle title if you have not downloaded?

Worked on books I "gifted".

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I think you can get a refund on a Kindle title if you have not downloaded?.

You can get it on a downloaded title so long as you haven't read much of it. There's a seven-day window. And in line with other Amazon return policies, don't do it too often.

[Timboli]

As many folk here would be aware, many ebooks have a limited copy license, with the average number being between 4 to 6 last I investigated. Medical textbooks and similar only have a single copy allowed license.

For those that don't understand this, we are talking about a limit of how many devices you can have a purchased ebook on. This is something that the publisher or author sets, and many have an unlimited license.

So with that in mind, I do wonder what the scenario is now with no longer supported devices.

In the past, if you removed a copy from a device, then you got the license back. It has also been the case, that if you contacted Amazon and said your device had died or been stolen, that they then de-registered it for you, and you got whatever licenses there was in use back for those ebooks on your device.

We have been told not to sync our old Kindles now, or all ebooks on it would be wiped. So if those devices have now been de-registered by Amazon, does that mean our license count for specific ebooks has now been increased by an added availability slot for each. One would hope this has been the case, so we don't need to risk existing content on such an old no longer supported device.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Timboli

We have been told not to sync our old Kindles now, or all ebooks on it would be wiped.

Not quite true. Amazon says: If you deregister or factory reset these devices, you will not be able to re-register or use these devices in any way.

Originally Posted by Timboli

So if those devices have now been de-registered by Amazon, does that mean our license count for specific ebooks has now been increased by an added availability slot for each. One would hope this has been the case, so we don't need to risk existing content on such an old no longer supported device.

Those devices are in an odd state right now. Mine still show as registered on the Devices web page. However no actions are available for them, including deregistering.

I see the books that are present on my newly unsupported devices still showing in the "Device(s) with this item" list when viewed on the Digital Content page of Amazon's web site. So I assume that they are still being counted as present there. Aparently nothing has changed yet in that regard.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Timboli

We have been told not to sync our old Kindles now, or all ebooks on it would be wiped. So if those devices have now been de-registered by Amazon, does that mean our license count for specific ebooks has now been increased by an added availability slot for each. One would hope this has been the case, so we don't need to risk existing content on such an old no longer supported device.

You only risk your content if you don't remove the DRM and create your own backup copy.

As for myself, I sideload everything, including books bought from the same store my current device is registered to (currently Kobo). No direct downloads to the device at all. YMMV.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

You only risk your content if you don't remove the DRM and create your own backup copy.

As for myself, I sideload everything, including books bought from the same store my current device is registered to (currently Kobo). No direct downloads to the device at all. YMMV.

I've only synced a Kobo once and that was the Aura H2O when I was setting it up. I stopped the sync before it finished and never synced since.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by Timboli

As many folk here would be aware, many ebooks have a limited copy license, with the average number being between 4 to 6 last I investigated. Medical textbooks and similar only have a single copy allowed license.

For those that don't understand this, we are talking about a limit of how many devices you can have a purchased ebook on. This is something that the publisher or author sets, and many have an unlimited license.

So with that in mind, I do wonder what the scenario is now with no longer supported devices.

In the past, if you removed a copy from a device, then you got the license back. It has also been the case, that if you contacted Amazon and said your device had died or been stolen, that they then de-registered it for you, and you got whatever licenses there was in use back for those ebooks on your device.

We have been told not to sync our old Kindles now, or all ebooks on it would be wiped. So if those devices have now been de-registered by Amazon, does that mean our license count for specific ebooks has now been increased by an added availability slot for each. One would hope this has been the case, so we don't need to risk existing content on such an old no longer supported device.

You can remove downloaded books back to the cloud on no longer supported devices, I’m done it, you just can’t re downloaded them. You get the licence back when you remove it.

You can sync the devices as the whispersync still works for location.