If you have an old Kindle—one bought before 2012—and you want to keep using it, pay attention. This is one update you don’t want to ignore.
Amazon is warning customers that they have until March 22—tomorrow—to update their old Kindles to be able to connect to the internet. Without the update, users will lose access to books in Amazon’s cloud, the ability to sync read states, and to download books from the Kindle store.
Those who miss the deadline will see the following message on their Kindle screen:
Your Kindle is unable to connect at this time. Please make sure you are within wireless range and try again. If the problem persists, please restart your Kindle from the Menu in Settings and try again.
All is not lost if you do miss the deadline. You can still update your Kindle, but the process is a bit more cumbersome: You’ll have to download the software onto your computer and connect your Kindle with a USB cable.
The update affects the following Kindles:
- Kindle 1st Generation (2007)
- Kindle 2nd Generation (2009)
- Kindle DX 2nd Generation (2009)
- Kindle Keyboard 3rd Generation (2010)
- Kindle 4th Generation (2011)
- Kindle 5th Generation (2012)
- Kindle Touch 4th Generation (2011)
- Kindle Paperwhite 5th Generation (2012)