Yes, I can’t tell you how to do it here, it would contravene the board rules.
Hmm… I followed the instructions for automatic wireless downloading: turn the wireless on, sync and check for new items, leave it plugged in and wireless on all night…
Nothing. No “Your Kindle is Updated”, no change in the old version number.
I’ll probably try the manual-download update-USB routine tonight. I still rather like USB cables. 
I had similar outcomes from similar efforts. I just had a chat with an Amazon rep (two in fact) and it would appear the old one (Gen2) is kaput. Nice offers to upgrade, but no actual fix available. Boo-hoo. From that chat I have deduced that this entire scare is to sell upgrades.
Hmm… well, I don’t think I’m going to buy an upgraded Kindle. If the manual update doesn’t work I’ll load new books via the USB.
That’s true. Any book on the cloud can be downloaded to the pc and transferred to the kindle by USB, Its extra steps, but it should still work.
The lesson here is that books on the cloud might not always be accessible. Will any of these old kindles still work 12 years from now? Who knows how many changes will occur in 12 years. A smart book buyer needs his own copies of his books on separate storage. Preferably without DRM. Then these books can be read with whatever Tech is available in the future.
Update update…
Wow, Amazon doesn’t really make it clear what you’ll need for the USB update. Check your serial number, if it begins with these characters you’ll need update A (if your version is below X), update B, and update C… if it begins with other characters you’ll need update A (if your version is below X,) update B, and update C. And they call the updates the same things, but link to slightly different update files, so you have to be paying a lot of attention to see that there’s actually a difference…
I didn’t need update A, I installed Update B and got the letter saying that my Kindle was good to go wireless after March 22nd. So I didn’t bother with update C, but when I checked on accessing the store this morning, it started to complain. So I’ll try update C when I get a chance…
Who cares if the actual Kindles work? The bigger issue is whether or not the actual cloud stored media is available, because if that’s still true, there are alternate ways of getting at it.
For example, as much as I love my Kindles (5th gen and 7th gen), I find myself reading stuff via the Kindle app on my phone as often as not, because I always have my phone with me, and if I have a few spare minutes, up comes the Kindle app and I start reading. Even if my Kindles spontaneously combusted at this very second, I’d be mostly annoyed that they’d burn my nightstand and wherever I left the other one, as the books are safely (for now) on the cloud, and the device is just a gizmo to access that.
My bigger concern would be if Amazon were to go bankrupt; what recourse would we have at that point? Presumably there would be a buyer or something that would keep the cloud storage going, but there aren’t any guarantees. That’s true of paper books too; they yellow, crumble, get eaten by bugs, accidentally mangled in various ways, lost and anything else that can happen to a collection of paper pages.
If Amazon goes bankrupt we’ll all be busy shooting looters and keeping our caves secure.
I tried to update mine yesterday, but I don’t think it worked. I don’t have the option for ‘update’ under my settings. Mine is 5.5 years old, one of the ones with the keyboard.
A friend of mine also told me that when she updated hers all of the books that were not bought on Amazon were deleted. Has anyone else had this problem? I have a lot of books from Gutenburg that I’d rather not lose.
On a related note, Amazon is offering to buy back older Kindles, I think mine is worth $30 so I might just do it and get a new one.
I keep a copy of my e-books on an external hard-drive as a back-up. Just in case.
Wait, do ebooks I bought from Amazon exist only on a cloud server somewhere?
I thought moving them to a device put the data on my laptop.
Depends on how you got the ebooks to your Kindle. If you downloaded them to a computer first and then copied over to the Kindle, then they’re still on your computer (unless you deleted them from it).
Of course they’re physically on your Kindle, as well - my Kindle hasn’t been connected to the internet since it was new, 5 or 6 years ago, and it works fine.
But, if you connect your Kindle to the internet, it’s possible (though highly unlikely) that Amazon could delete items that it thinks you should not have. It’s also likely that Amazon does get some level of information about what’s on your Kindle, including ebooks from sources other than Amazon.
The cloud server is really a sort of backup - if you need to download your books again for whatever reason, that’s where they live. So if Amazon goes out of business, the cloud is gone. But the copies you already downloaded will still exist, on your Kindle and wherever else you stored them.
Amazon’s DRM, however, means those saved copies are going to be useless if you want to use them on a platform that isn’t licensed by Amazon.
You can also download from your Kindle to your computer with the result you have copies in both locations.
It’s possible, but I seriously doubt they care.
I expect that if that happens there will be a blossoming of apps to remove those DRM’s, if they don’t exist already.
It’s more a concern for those who purchased streaming rights from Amazon - in that case the video lives only in the cloud, unless there’s some way to record it as you view it that I’m unaware of.
Yup. I didn’t have wifi at home when I got my Kindle, so I got into the habit of transferring via USB and I’ve kept it up, purely for that reason. Wasn’t there a case years ago when Amazon took back everyone’s copy of something or other?
In fact, every month or so I also do a ‘synctoy’ backup of the kindle to a thumbdrive… just in case.
Also… Um. This might be treading on slightly shaky ground morally, but if your public library lends out digital books as mine does (through Overdrive) you get those books via Amazon as well. Once your loan period is up they do something that causes your Kindle to no longer be able to display them. But if you didn’t quite finish reading it in time, well, it apparently can’t do that ‘Time’s up’ thing until you next sync your Kindle, which won’t happen if you turn on Airplane mode until you find out whodunit. :o
(Hey, in those circumstances with actual paper books I just keep the book a few extra days and pay the fine, I figure this is, if anything, better for everyone: the book is still marked as available/passed along to the next borrower right on time instead of holding them up. Maybe I should increase my annual donation to the Friends of the Library for the unpaid overdue fine though…)
Maybe, maybe not. Besides the Kindle itself, I also have the Kindle reader installed on my computer. I found out by accident one day that the books I’d dled for the physical Kindle can sometimes – but not always – be read via the desktop version as well. There must be variations in the rights sometimes, because I always do the exact same steps when getting them all.
Kindle apps are licensed by Amazon. And they should be linked with your Amazon account, meaning that anything you have on your Kindle should also be transferable to your other Kindle reader devices/apps. You still can’t use your Amazon ebooks on a non-Amazon app or device, though. Nor can you convert an Amazon ebook into a different format. Not without removing the DRM.
Maybe they should be, but they aren’t always. Just yesterday I dled a short story “2 B R 0 2 B” (To Be Or Not To Be) by Kurt Vonnegut to my computer. The file wouldn’t open in the desktop Kindle reader but when I transferred the file to my physical Kindle it worked perfectly.
And, yes, both devices are linked inside Amazon – every time I go to download something it asks me if I plan to transfer it to <name of kindle> or <name of desktop>. I always pick the physical kindle account. But sometimes the file will also work with the desktop, sometimes it won’t. My guess is that the publisher/writer has made different choices on the right’s setting. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll try dling it again, and specify the desktop one, and see how that goes.
My non-Amazon ebooks are still there, and readable.
So are mine, and I can access the store via the wireless.
Are you downloading them all through Amazon? I’ve had Kindles for nearly 5 years now, and I’ve never had the situation where it cared in the least what device it’s on.
It will download copies to the actual devices, and you have to do that before you can read them on the Kindle app or on an actual Kindle device, but that’s more for offline reading than anything else. And sometimes, it’s not so awesome at syncing up the last page read across all devices, but that’s usually a network access issue (my bedroom is kind of far from the wireless router) rather than a Kindle issue.
But I’ve never had it care that I’ve downloaded it to a device before, and never had it ask WHERE I want to download it either; whatever I buy shows up in the “Cloud”, and I can download it to my devices or read it online via the browser app.
It sounds like you are getting the books via WiFi or Wireless? When I buy a book there’s a selection box that says something like “Deliver the book to XXXXX’s Kindle” with a dropdown arrow. When I click that, it offers me a choice of my Kindle or the desktop computer’s kindle app and below that a “transfer via USB” – or maybe it’s transfer via computer, I’m not sure. Anyway, I pick that, and then click buy. The next screen asks what device I plan to transfer the book to – with the same Kindle/computer reader choices. I always pick the Kindle, and then the download proceeds.
After that I have the (usually) .azw3 file in my download folder, which I then transfer to the kindle by wire. These always work perfectly on the Kindle. One time, instead of dragging the file to the Kindle document folder I accidentally double clicked it. To my surprise, after a few seconds the desktop’s kindle app opened with the new book open and ready for reading on it. (I had the desktop app for a while before I actually bought a Kindle.)
Since then I’ve occasionally used the desktop to do some reading for one reason or another by deliberately clicking on the .azw3 or whatever file. I’d say about 75% of the time this works, but one out of four times there’s a pause, then the kindle app displays something like “This book cannot be opened. Remove it from your device and download another copy.” And this will be the same file as the one I had previously transferred to the Kindle and which worked fine, so I know the file wasn’t defective. So??? As I said, my guess is that somehow – some setting in the digital rights – sometimes must say the equivalent of “only on XXX’s Kindle” while other times it says “on any of XXXX’s devices.”