Oct 25, 2026

Today, I stacked four old Kindles on my kitchen table and tried, one after the other, which ones were still accessible by USB port.

One of them, the oldest and my first-ever Kindle, still had one of these QWERTY keyboards. I loved that one, but the screen broke a long time ago.

There were two others without touchscreens - I don't know which generation, but the ones that still had these slender keys on the left and right of the screen. 

One of them was the one I had been using myself for a long time. The other, I had bought used.

And then finally, a newer backlit one with touchscreen that one day just stopped responding.

Of these, I got access only to the one I bought used. The identical model that used to be my own had a password set. Of course, I have forgotten the password. 

When I plug it into the USB port on a Windows machine, it is recognized briefly as a USB drive. Then I guess the firmware sets in and tells the OS that we need the password.

Maybe I'll find a way around it. I want to use one of them outside the Amazon ecosystem - just upload my own ebook files, like I used to do with my very first Kindle.

Later, I had the idle thought that a printer, a regular printer on paper, is kind of an amazing thing. It's like a 3D printer for thoughts.

We don't appreciate printers enough.