Owners of Kindle e-readers can do this the easy way or the hard way. Either way, they'll need to update their Kindles with an emergency patch from Amazon if they ever want to see new books downloaded to their e-readers again.
Without the update, owners of Kindle e-readers will no longer have access to the Kindle store and other Kindle services. They'll also be unable to download books from the cloud to their e-readers.
March 22 is the last day to get the update without having to go through added hassle. Those who miss the deadline will receive the following message:
"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."
So the easy way to tackle this problem is to allow the e-readers to update automatically while they slumber. By leaving the tablets connected to both power and Wi-Fi, they'll fetch the emergency update on their own.
The "hard way," which is more of a hassle and hard and entails performing the update manually.
To manually install the update, Kindle e-reader owners will need to follow the website and download the patches that are appropriate for their devices. From there, they'll need to follow the steps listed to load and install the patches.
Here are all of the e-readers that will need the emergency patch:
Kindles that'll require 2G or 3G for the update include the first generation Kindle (2007), version 1.2.1; the second generation Kindle (2009) version 2.5.8; and the second generation Kindle DX (2009) version 2.5.8.
E-readers that'll require Wi-Fi for the update include the third generation Kindle Keyboard (2010) version 3.4.2 or higher; the fourth generation Kindle (2011), version 4.1.3 or higher; the fifth generation Kindle (2012), version 4.1.3 or higher; the fourth generation Kindle Touch (2011), version 5.3.7.3 or higher; and the fifth generation Kindle Paperwhite (2012), version 5.6.1.1 or higher.
And here are all of the e-readers that require no update to retain their web connectivity: the sixth generation Kindle Paperwhite (2013); the seventh generation Kindle (2014); the seventh generation Kindle Voyage (2014); and the seventh generation Kindle Paperwhite (2015).
