Back in high school/early college, i was reading daily for ~4 hours at a rate of 60-100 pages per hour. Which means a novel every 2-5 days.

Assuming it takes 5 days to finish a book, that means ~6 books per month. Or ~72 books per year. If every one of them cost $10, then you're looking at around $700 worth of books per year for a teen.

You might be asking: then why not borrow from a library? Well, a) I lived in a country where literature was heavily censored, b) I mostly read in English, which was not available in said library, c) after reading a stupid amount of books per year, you start to realize most books published by the US big 5 fall into specific categories, and to find something not in those you need to look into indie publishing. These days, most people self publish through ebooks on Amazon (and are locked into exclusively deals because of Kindle unlimited, so no physical copies). At a certain point, an ereader is more economical and environmentally friendly than paperbacks. (I used a phone back in those days, I would have killed for an ereader).

As for why I had an old kindle device registered to my Amazon account, I don't actually read on it (it has never been turned on since 2019). It is solely used as a dedrm device. Until last year, older kindles can be used to remove drm from purchased ebooks by simply downloading the ebook from Amazon's website and running a script with the Kindle's serial number. I believe supporting indie authors (that are sometimes chained to Amazon) is more important than hurting Amazon. So once I could afford it, I started purchasing all the indie books I read, downloading them, and ripping the drum for archival purposes. I would read my books on another Kobo e-reader.

As for e-readers I've used: I like things with physical buttons, big bw e-ink screens, and epub support (I have scripts to reformat epub books to my liking). The best e-reader I've had was the Kobo Forma, which I gave a friend after I acquired the Kobo Sage (which was a huge disappointment and piece of crap). These days, everything is shifting to shitty color e-ink screens, so I recently bought a refurbished Kobo Libra 2 (smaller screen, but still paperback sized and has no phantom button issues like the sage). I plan to de-solder and replace the battery and use it for another 10 years or so, until color e-ink gets better or they give up on it.

If anyone wants some examples of good, indie books that stuck with me over the years:

• Virtual Immortality/Division Zero by Matthew S Cox (Cyberpunk)
• Mother of Learning by Nobody01 (Fantasy, Time-loop)
• The Wandering Inn by Pirateaba (Fantasy, got picked up by a big five publisher this month and is re-releasing under Harper Colins)

You can also find these in the other "usual" places.

(1) The only reason I had one of these old ones was because removing the drm on stuff you purchased was trivially easy. The new ones use OTA updates to prevent that (old ones allowed transferring purchases via USB, so you can download the books online directly to your PC)

(2) What if the particular form factor you like is no longer produced (e.g. the Kindle Oasis, while not in this list, was discontinued because "nobody needs physical buttons anymore". Amazon gets to decide that, not you)? It doesn't mean what you own should turn into a paperweight.

(3) Sometimes, the device itself has sentimental value. My Kindle was an engineering sample gifted to me as a teen by an uncle that worked at Amazon at the time (I can say that now, he's retired for ages). Replacing it with another kindle isn't the same.

At this point, just go get a refurbished Kobo. A forma or libra 2 would do you much better.

You're welcome. Yeah, I agree. I've been doing a lot of removing AI infested programs from my life recently and found that the ones without it work better anyway.

Yeah, it's very sad. :(

Ticking time bomb seems a little dramatic for a device of this age. Anyone who actually cares enough to resurrect this hardware can use homebrew solutions. No vendor on the planet supports a product longer than this. Maybe you could argue the entire industry needs to change, but absolutely nothing about this situation is uniquely diabolical.

Linux just ended support for the i486 chipset. Is that out of line by your standards as well? Are vendors obligated to support products for an eternity? What would be a reasonable amount of time to continue providing support if 14 years isn't long enough? I really think the existence of homebrew solutions negates any major concerns here. Even if that didn't exist, there's nothing particularly unique about this situation. In fact the support window was like twice as long as the closest competitors. I think the language here is a little over dramatic to be honest.

At least it's FOSS, so can be forked

I bought a XTEink X4 and flashed it with crosspoint. I went from reading maybe one book every 2 years to having read 5 novels in the last 2 months already. The advantage of the ereader is that I can pull it out of my pocket in any moment of downtime instead of scrolling on my phone and just read

That's valid

Yep, and already has been. Links are on the site I linked :)

Portability. Built in lighting for night time. Potentially waterproof. Shelf space. Etc etc

That means Linux chose to stop updating those devices. If Linux somehow stopped you from being able to use your existing Linux version on you i486 chipset, the analogy would work. But your analogy in the real world just supports my point even further.

They are not required to "support" products in the form of updates. They are required, ethically, to support them continuing the functionality they were sold with for as long as the device is in use.

If they don't want to continue operating a backend that's necessary for it to work, they should put out a patch so the same functionality can be obtained through local-only behaviours. This is really no different from the "stop killing games" movement, except that it deals with actual hardware that is sold under the promise of certain behaviour, rather than a purely-software game.

Whoops, I have a kobo. I meant to say kindle. I've only ever used the calibre software to access my ereader. Calibre is better than either of their interfaces.

The devices still work. They display book pages, that's all they need to do. There's zero reason to upgrade just because something is shinier. That's literally just consuming for consumption's sake.