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Comment by hemant6488 | Hacker News Reader

I revived my old kindle pw7 using this a week or so ago. If you have an old kindle lying around, you can use it as an e-ink weather dashboard (or anything else for that matter, as long as you can convert it into a 8bit greyscale image).

https://terminalbytes.com/reviving-kindle-paperwhite-7th-gen...

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My old kindle is a Kindle 3 from 2010, and it's still my primary e-ink reader. I still haven't found a compelling reason to upgrade.

I gave up on my first paperwhite last year (10+ years old). Would randomly lose its charge, which was annoying when bringing it on trips (and often not having an old micro-usb charger lying around). And from being stuck into all kinds of pockets and bags without a protector (half the use was it fitting in my pants) had seriously scratched up the screen. The new one I got is nice, but other than the old one being beaten up, I don't notice much difference. A bit faster to click around, but in the end it's mostly the same.

Mine would have longer and longer delays on each page turn when I started using it again last year. It's a 10+ years Paperwhite as well.

I jailbroke it and installed KOReader. Suddenly, no delays, great interface, wi-fi sync with Calibre. I might replace the battery one day, but it still lasts 2-3 books.

Books as a unit of time. Interesting :D.

Not sure what my old kindle version was, it had a keyboard though, but I upgraded eventually because I wanted a warm toned backlight. It's nice that the newer ones are a bit snappier too.

> Your Kindle must have a valid, internet-connected WiFi network saved to it that it can connect to during steps 8 to 10 (inclusive)

So only Kindle 3+ with keyboards work with this method, the early ones were whispernet only.

I upgraded from Kindle Keyboard to Kindle 2023 last year. Backlight is very nice and I appreciate its lighter weight, but otherwise it's pretty much the same.

Yup yup yup. I cracked my keyboard and got a paperwhite. I love the dark mode for late night reading but would probably go back to a refurbished keyboard in the face of any strife; just like the old form factor more.

I find the Kindle keyboard pretty much perfect.

Even the battery surgery wasn't that hard and fixed the only problem mine had.

Only upgrade I did from my old kindle paper white was to a water-sealed version. Really nice to take it to the beach or a pool then just hose it off when I’m done so it doesn’t have sand and such everywhere. Just less stressful to carry around in general.

USB-C on the newer Paperwhites (and base Kindles? IDK if those changed over yet), in case you just want all your (portable) gear to be USB-C.

What is extremely annoying is people constantly and universally lauding the Kindle for Kids option, when it is only offered in the US. Or, at least, its barely offered in the EU.

Those USB-C to microUSB adapters are handy, I keep one in my backpack since my camera and some other things are microUSB.

I replaced the USB port on my older kindle with a USB-C port when I did the same for a bunch of devices. Not an option for everyone but if you have the time and patience (and a little skill) I highly recommend it.

Unfortunately your Kindle needs to be registered to do this, and it's often a phenomenal pain in the ass to get old Kindles to register, if it's possible at all. I've got two old Paperwhites and I can't get either of them to register despite trying for hours and hours with every troubleshooting step I've found.

Thanks for the shout out to kindle-dash! <3 Great looking dashboard you have there!

Thanks for sharing this! I'm working on a very similar project, and the bit about disabling sleep/built-in services was very helpful.

Nice to see a good write up. I did the same a year ago, it refreshes every hour (except night) and battery needs to be charged every 24-25 days.

i love this! unfortunately I'm still using my old pw for reading, I'll have to buy a second used one for this project

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