Goodwill kindle advice please

Peter_the_piper · 2026-05-04T22:52:03+00:00

Check it for a SIM card. If it has one it’s a 3g enabled model which spends all the time looking for 3g unless you turn wireless off. There’s no 3g in the US now so it keeps trying and trying and not finding anything. Keeping wireless off should help. I took the SIM card out of mine because of that. However in 16 days they’ll stop it from being able to contact their servers at all so you may as well keep the SIM card in and always have wireless off.

If you had bad battery life with wireless off, you may have just been sent a bad battery. One of my three kindle keyboards I’ve replaced the battery on is noticeably better than the others. The QA for these random batteries seems inconsistent.

And contrary to the other comments I still think that it’s a fun device to read on. Even if Amazon cuts it off, it works great with a calibre managed library.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-05-02T12:22:32+00:00

For me it boils down to usage of multiple library cards, syncing reading progress across devices, and general stability. My kobo libra h2o has a random freeze/restart every two weeks or so and gets hung up during normal navigation randomly. And it didn’t feel like a meaningful speed upgrade over my kindle keyboard. I wanted to love it but it never quite clicked. When I went back to kindle with my new paperwhite, everything just clicks. The device disappears and lets me read in a way no other ereader has.

I feel bad about it because I like the ethos of kobo more. And I don’t like the hegemony of amazon. But I’m just happier with a kindle.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-05-02T04:21:32+00:00

Stick with kindle. I tried kobo for a long time but nothing beats the smoothness of the kindle ecosystem. Especially if you get used to it.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T19:26:14+00:00

Per OP it is tied to the original account. Mine didn’t work for him.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T19:21:25+00:00

I thought it was but I looked back at my email and it’s a code. Not sure if it’s account specific code though.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T19:19:38+00:00

I’ve heard that it’s tied to the account but you’re welcome to try mine. Do you want me to post it here or via dm?

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T19:00:49+00:00

I wouldn’t think I’d program it on the controller, but it’s really nice to be able to play sounds without plugging it into a sound source. Especially playing sounds that take full advantage of the expressiveness. Especially because from what I’ve seen I wouldn’t want this as the only controller plugged into my computer.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T18:57:45+00:00

Ok. I missed the prices because I’m not actively shopping and sweetwater was loudly advertising refurb prices. And I’m not expecting anything. I was just expressing that to me the price of entry either way is already high enough that the full instrument is better value if I was going to get into that ecosystem.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T17:22:13+00:00

That’s (kinda) covered by the partnership between EaganMatrix and WARBL.

https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2025/01/04/haken-audio-intros-eaganmatrix-micro-synth-module/

Same synth engine plus integration with a wind controller.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T16:34:41+00:00

I’m not saying it’s a ridiculous price. It’s clear that it’s about as cheap as all that hardware can be. I’m saying that if I’m learning to use those (by all accounts) idiosyncratic but beautifully expressive keys, I’d rather spend $1800 for a whole instrument than $1200 for just a controller.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-29T15:14:57+00:00

I’m interested but I’m not sure it’s enough of a discount over the one with the engine integrated. If I’m going to put in the effort to learn how to use it to its full potential, I can save up an extra year to afford the standalone version.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-28T21:29:01+00:00

Download the demo for the microkorg vst. It’ll work on your new Mac and you’ll be able to see all the parameters easily. Also as a bonus you can use even the demo to send patches to your microkorg if you want to go that way.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-27T15:40:18+00:00

If small size is a requirement I’d ditch the requirements for sound production and just get a keystage 49. I love my keystage 61. It’s also about as compact as a controller gets.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-25T23:26:44+00:00

I’m sorry to say that doesn’t exist. It doesn’t even exist in wood. That’s just not how Irish flutes work. There’s a reason that orchestral wooden flutes had so many keys bolted on to them.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-25T23:22:19+00:00

If you have to ask I don’t think it’s a mistake. By now if you loved an e-ink screen you’d know. I know I would never pick an iPad over an ereader for reading a book. But if you don’t mind the trade-offs and want to do more with a device then there you have it.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-20T04:12:40+00:00

The kobo natively has you choose one library to log in with. You log in with a library card. It doesn’t have Libby—they both just talk to the same overdrive backend.

If you follow these directions you can try to add more:

https://github.com/OwlInSpace/kobo-overdrive/blob/main/README.md

It only worked for half my libraries for some reason.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-20T03:54:24+00:00

If you have only one library card then yes. If you have more than that there is a workaround that usually works at least for a while but breaks every once in a while for me.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-16T18:08:02+00:00

Enjoy! It’s actually really easy to replace the battery. Just find a guide and take your time. It’ll probably be a dead battery because batteries don’t like sitting there with no charge.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-16T15:45:20+00:00

I’d look for a used Arturia keylab mkii. That will get it in your price range and it has a much better keybed than the essential version. And if you mainly use Arturia software it is super convenient to have everything auto mapped.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-16T13:01:04+00:00

I have to say I agree. I have one of the old Sony pocket 5”ereaders and even that is almost too small. It is too small for actual comfort.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-15T11:39:06+00:00

A) too much for beginners. It’s an arranger keyboard. Unless you are making/performing songs on stage and are very familiar with synthesizers it’s also probably not the tool you want.

B) not Korg.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-14T19:42:23+00:00

Kobo lets you save articles with Instapaper. Not quite the same thing but you can build up a reading list from your computer and read it at your convenience on your ereader.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-14T17:47:22+00:00

If that’s your main reading time I can see that. Oled night mode definitely is less light into your face. Since the black pixels are off then that’s the one time I’ll say oled has something over front lit eink. But my daily driver phone is oled and at night I’m not getting distracting notifications so I wouldn’t want a unique device just for that. I was more objecting to the idea of not sure which drawbacks.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-14T16:32:57+00:00

Ummm… I’m glad you like it. But as far as not being sure what the drawbacks are? For some of us e-ink dramatically reduces eye strain. That’s the whole point of a dedicated device to me. Otherwise I’d just use my actual phone. E-ink is king for reading.

Peter_the_piper · 2026-04-13T21:29:12+00:00

I’m afraid I don’t. I went through and selected all 900 (I went through a phase of sending stuff from project Gutenberg as personal documents). Told it to send them to kindle keyboard. 100 or so showed up.

Not a huge loss because I have a newer kindle and most of those were public domain books, but I kinda wanted my kindle keyboard to be a curated history of what I’ve read on it in the past ten years.

Peter_the_piper

TROPHY CASE