[fastball]

Kindles support epub now.

"Locked to Amazon unless you jailbreak" is overselling it imo. You've always been able to (very easily) sideload DRM-free ebooks and read them on your kindle.

Since "reading ebooks" is ostensibly why you'd buy a Kindle in the first place, I'm not sure what more you need.

[amanaplanacanal]

Kindles don't really support epub. If you copy an epub into your Kindle it cannot read it. If you use the "send to Kindle" app, it sends the epub to Amazon, which converts it to their proprietary format and ships it down to your Kindle.

[KingMob]

> (very easily) sideload

"Easily" does not apply to grandpa and huge swathes of the human race.

[fastball]

What is it grandpa is capable of doing, if not plugging the kindle in the computer and dragging and dropping a file onto the "kindle" device that is now mounted in his file explorer?

[KingMob]

"OK, I opened the explorer, but I don't see it."

"Type 'kindle' in the search."

"Alright, hold on... do I want kindle.com? I'm on Amazon, now where do I go?"

A slightly more experienced fastball realizes grandpa has opened his never-updated Internet Explorer on his old Windows box.

Maybe your family is tech-savvy, but there's many who aren't.

[fastball]

If grandpa understands how to use email, he can also just email his kindle an ebook and it will appear on his kindle.