Message from Amazon about my much loved Kindle

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Just got this email this morning. Absolutely gutted - my kindle was bought for me by my ds for Christmas 2011 when he was a student- still works perfectly.

I must cane my Kindle. I’m on my third one now.

15yrs! Well done OP, I’ve had several kindles, i think the longest lived was only 3yrs or so. Went back to paper books when the digital version was virtually the same price.

I got the email too, mine is a 1st gen paperwhite I think. Absolutely nothing wrong with it and it works fine.

I’m holding out for an offer on a paperwhite, hopefully before the discount code runs out. I don’t want the standard kindle because I find the paperwhite much easier on my eyes and easier to read in the sun.

I'm on my third Kindle in 15 years but none have actually broken. I traded in my Keyboard one for a Paperwhite when they were released and then upgraded to a newer Paperwhite that was waterproof in 2022? when it was being sold off when a new model was introduced.

This was before the price went up quite substantially so cost a lot less than they do now. I don't think I'll replace my current reading kindle unless it breaks so hopefully it will last until they retire this version and have another upgrade offer.

I kept the old one as a spare but then used it as part of a trade in offer when I bought a Kindle scribe (again a double discount situation so I only paid about 60% of the full price). However I've not used the Scribe so might end up selling it.

Are you mistaking the Kindle tablet for the standard Kindle, which is more or less identical except it isn't waterproof?

I have mine from around that time too. It was bough for me by my parents as a young adult. I love it. Its been on every holiday/trip away I have been on. Still works perfectly. I know its old and its unheard of for tech to still be going strong after that amount of time. But that is one of the things I love about it. I was sad to get the email yesterday.

i nearly caved and bought the £79 one as I think it was a good deal and I really like the matcha green. But wobbled about getting the entry level rather than the paper white. But I really dislike the paper white colours and I’m not keen on trading one black paper white for the same colour albeit newer version. I want it to be visually different

If you are eligible for the discount code it's just under £60, plus you get a £15 credit on books.
I caved and bought the green one. Quite excited! My old one dates from 2011.

It was yesterday but it’s not today as the non paperwhite has gone back up to £95 (from £75 yesterday)

the paperwhite is £160 but was down to £125 a couple of weeks ago. Hope they do that reduction again before our voucher expires. Even tho the colours are not to my taste

No, the standard kindle is lit differently to the paperwhite. The paperwhite has an adjustable warm light to make it easier to read at night without straining your eyes.

I’m holding out for that paperwhite deal to come back again too, hoping to get it for under £100 with the discount.

The colours aren’t as good - it’s a shame they haven’t done the matcha green in the paperwhite. I’m just going to get black again. Might get a nice case for it.

I've had the email too and I'm really grumpy now. I've got a 4th Gen Kindle from about 2012 which still works absolutely fine (and I use it all the time). The battery life faltered about a year ago but DH bought a new battery and fitted it and it's been great since. I love the one I have because I tend to read one-handed and it still has the physical page turn buttons at the side which I prefer but you can't get on Kindles any more.

What’s really annoyed me, I deleted loads of books on it, to make it easier to find what I wanted. It won’t download anymore, so is effectively useless. I’m so disappointed.

You should still be able to download for now, they're not switching it off until next month.

So a new paperwhite is £160, right? Without the discount. I don't really know enough about different types given i have the paperwhite first gen but I basically don't want any other features compared to that, and I want the paper / soft eye / antiglare effect for reading. I don't want internet connectivity!
Urgh, that feels like a lot of £ when I hadn't planned to replace it. I think i may just take my chances with my old one with the books I have already, get as many free classics on it as possible before May, and use the library more (good in itself). Or nick my children's more modern ones...

I’ve heard that you could download loads from kindle unlimited etc to it before the deadline and then switch it into airplane mode which means if you then cancelled kindle unlimited for example, the system wouldn’t be able to sync with the kindle so couldn’t remove the books.

You just can’t turn the wifi back on - might work for a short while until buying a new one.

I don’t think any library apps are compatible with kindles though are they? (Asks hopefully!!)

The early kindles were the best, Kindle is an amazing example of a company constantly fixing something that was never broken!

And wouldn’t recommend the kindle app, the kindle itself is designed to give less glare and doesn’t have the same amount of blue light rays that the phone or iPad has that are bad for sleep

God I sound so negative and nerdy

I am disappointed as I love my 5th generation Paperwhite from 2012 which I have used every single day except when I was unconscious after an operation and the week I was living 24-7 as a medieval person.

I am pretty impressed it has lasted this long and would have been philosophical if it had died and would have gone straight out and bought another, but being expected to replace perfectly good tech is annoying.

However luckily my ‘unread’ folder has 92 books in it so I am going to read them all before buying a new kindle, thus depriving Amazon of all the money I would have spent on new books.

In your face, Amazon.

It just doesn’t seem to want to.

So not that easily but I did find some websites that told me how to do it, using Libby, Adobe Digital Editions and Calibre. It is a pretty fiddly process though but I managed it for a holiday so I could read borrowed books on my kindle.

Have you tried doing one at a time? That worked for me after the freezing episodes. I've only done a couple though.

Or it could be solely out of copyright books by long dead authors

It isn't. Anna's Archive has books by still living, still working authors, who will receive nothing for any books downloaded from there.

Project Gutenberg and Fadedpage are sites for out of copyright books - except that they are based on non-UK copyright, which is life+50 years. UK copyright is life+75 years. UK authors who have been dead for less than 75 years are not out of copyright.

I'm impressed it has lasted so long i am on my fourth kindle. I will confess I lost the first two. But my 3rd kindle died a few years ago it was at a point where I was having to charge it every night and one night I plugged it in and nothing happened, its never recovered.

This in spades. I prefer my media to be in a form I physically own.

You can jailbreak it so you can continue to add new books to it. There are lots of guides online for how to do this and hundreds of places you can get epub/mobi format books for free or very little.