“Amazon drops Kindle encryption”
People still buy Kindles?
I love my little Paperwhite.
If all you want to do is be able to download and read books, an unadorned Kindle works fine for that purpose. It’s easier to carry around than a stack of paperbacks, which makes it nice for travel, and battery life has improved drastically over the past few years. OTOH, Kindle DRM is a pain. I haven’t bothered to strip it off because the aggravation factor is just low enough to not bother, but that may be coming.
Do it today, so it won’t bite you tomorrow.
I got one a year ago; love it.
ipads have the same benefits, with the bonus that they are still encrypted.
We bought a Kindle Fire a couple of weeks ago. $40 (on sale) for a decently-featured small tablet with a solid warranty. Why not?
The iPad is a fine piece of technology but it’s not particularly well suited for reading IMHO.
The Kindle Paperwhite is much lighter, can easily be held in one hand, has a glare-free screen that’s easy to read in a dark room or a sunny beach, and has a battery life measured in weeks instead of hours. If you’re just looking for something to read eBooks it’s much better suited to the task than a full-fledged tablet.
It never occurred to me to worry about encrypting my Kindle for the same reason it never occurred to me to put my printed books under lock and key. I imagine it’s probably a bigger concern for people who use their devices to read sensitive documents.
Second what @Brainspore said. IPads make mediocre ebooks; the Paperwhite is so much easier on the eyes and really feels close to a paper book. And the matte screen is a huge help. It has possibly the worst web browser ever made, though.
Right. But this article isn’t about e-ink Kindles – it’s about Kindle Fire tablets, which are LCD-based tablets running a non-standard form of Android.
Gotta say, the bottom of the line paperwhite is a decent little machine for the price. I’d prefer a tablet-sized paperwhite, but for the price -and as a reading device- it really is a gem.
+1 to the got one, love it sentiment.
It’s very easy. I’ve never needed to use the kindle app.
Very true, I’m aware. The comment about Paperwhites was just in response to someone asking if people still bought Kindles 
When you say
Amazon drops Kindle encryption
People will assume that all those e-ink readers from Amazon, colloquially called Kindles had any encryption to begin with.
Sorry, but Kindle Voyage, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard or various lesser models NEVER HAD encryption.
Amazon has dropped encryption on their Fire Tablets. Some news sites, where editors actually think and cross-check their facts before writing a click-bait heading report that even the [in]famous Fire Phone from Amazon never had encryption.
According to some other geek news sites it looks like the encryption on Amazon branded Fire tablets has been broken for a long time but nobody noticed until recently.
No, because people will see that it’s one of Cory’s stories, and expect click-bait.
FireOS?
I used to be into Kindles, back when Amazon’s lockdown fu was still either really weak or really apathetic; but while they still deign to permit some sideloading, actual ROM transplants aren’t what they used to be. Fairly logical, given their objectives; but annoying.
Balkan also highlighted the hypocrisy of Amazon using encryption to
protect its copyright with digital rights management or DRM technology.
DRM-laden media == $ for Amazon
Unencrypted user data == fewer potential legal hassles + potential $ for Amazon.
No hypocrisy; it’s just a successful, increasingly popular business model that the public at large continues to support.
People still buy the world’s most popular eBook reader? What?
Edit: apparently this is talking about the Kindle Fire platform, the actual tablets. Which yes, I would agree with you on, who is buying those? My bad.
