[HN Gopher] SunBook - Sunlight Readable Netbook (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
SunBook - Sunlight Readable Netbook (2014)
Author : iagovar
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-05-30 10:57 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cloversystems.designscience.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (cloversystems.designscience.info)
| the-dude wrote:
| Uhhh, wasn't the OLPC the first?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
| gumby wrote:
| Yes. The PixelQi screen in this laptop was developed for the
| olpc.
| [deleted]
| 1996 wrote:
| No longer sold. Old CPU. Not enough ram.
|
| Instead, get a Yogabook C930 with a dual display eInk + color,
| and touch + pen support on both screens. Great for notetaking in
| portrait mode: looks like a book, you write with the pen on the
| eink side while reading PDF or websites on the other side.
| Smaller than a macbook air or an ipad. Feels lighter too when
| held like a book in portrait mode.
|
| Better: Fold over to use eink as the main display in mirror mode
| after updating the drivers. This suspend the color display to
| save battery. Ideal with a bluetooth or mechanical USBC keyboard:
| 2 USB-C ports for charging and connecting a peripheral at the
| same time.
|
| Get the APAC model for 8GB Ram + multiband LTE.
|
| Review and picture on https://little-
| beans.net/review/yogabook-c930/
|
| Linux driver is WIP on
| https://github.com/aleksb/yogabook-c930-linux-eink-driver
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| A touch keyboard is a no-go for me, sadly. Especially for this
| kind of usecase.
| 1996 wrote:
| > A touch keyboard is a no-go for me, sadly. Especially for
| this kind of usecase
|
| Get a USBC mechanical keyboard if that's your thing ; an
| amd64 tablet with a eink display and enough ports to connect
| a mechanical keyboard is quite unique.
|
| If you plan to use it as a "laptop", you are missing 95% of
| the usecase: it's for taking notes with the wacom pen (55% of
| my use) and using the eink screen as the main screen with a
| physical keyboard (40% of my use).
|
| The remaining 5% is using the touch keyboard to type a login
| when I can't be bothered to grab my laptop in the next room
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah that's not what I want it for :) I would really like a
| sunlight readable laptop. But I don't want to mess with a
| separate keyboard outside.
|
| But hopefully some day something like this will come.
| totetsu wrote:
| I think there's one of these in the local bookoff..
| 1996 wrote:
| Give it a try. Highly underrated as a reading and notetaking
| device on top of being one of the rare laptop with eink
| screen that you can buy.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Oh I see they also made one with a real keyboard as
| recently as last year (thinkbook plus), wonder if the eink
| can be drawn via software directly (instead of using it as
| a regular display and let the driver guess how to optimize
| draw calls).
| 1996 wrote:
| Check my link for github, IIRC I think it's the same USB
| driver so it should work too.
| tempodox wrote:
| > IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the
| Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.
|
| Because they were of poor quality, poor reliability and high
| cost. The Jepsen reality distortion field only lasted for about
| a year.
| legutierr wrote:
| I don't know about reliability and quality of the Pixel Qi
| screens, but the underlying technology worked--I saw it
| working on the OLPC, and it was great.
|
| Sometimes it takes a few iterations to get the production
| process right. Maybe if Mary Lou Jensen's reality distortion
| field had lasted a bit longer we would all have been better
| off.
|
| I, for one, would buy one of these things in a minute if they
| were still available.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > I saw it working on the OLPC, and it was great.
|
| Which one? I saw XO and it was terrible. I am genuinely
| curious, did you actually use it actively? Because a lot of
| people take a quick look and then use their first
| impression. My meaning of terrible is that it was unusable
| compared to an equivalent LCD of the same price (I have to
| guess based on what I was told was the actual selling price
| of the overall product, about USD$250 in 2008 since OLPC
| was never transparent about their costs and Quanta holds
| such data tight). It had lower resolution. Lower brightness
| and color gamut in normal mode. Lower contrast in
| reflective mode.
|
| > Mary Lou Jensen's reality distortion field had lasted a
| bit longer we would all have been better off
|
| I doubt it. btw, it is Jepsen, not Jensen. I work in the
| display industry. Most of the experts I talked to were
| surprised that anyone thought it would be successful. Which
| explains why the only investors were unsophisticated
| decision makers from UN. The millions wasted on it were
| taken from developing countries. That's a shame. Jepsen
| left the industry and now works on "practical telepathy". I
| think it is easier to shift the reality distortion field to
| a new set of victims than it is to actually make genuine
| improvements to a technology.
| legutierr wrote:
| Yes, I did use the OLPC quite a bit. I was an active
| supporter of the project, so I bought a number of the
| devices when they were first made available to donors. I
| actually taught myself Python on the OLPC itself just so
| I could hack the software that came pre-installed on the
| device, and I volunteered a bunch of time debugging those
| programs.
|
| The OLPC as a whole was a mixed bag; a successful
| experiment, I think, even if the project was a bit of a
| fiasco. The keyboard was trash, not just because of its
| size, but because the rubberized keys would frequently
| fail to capture key presses. The OS they released was
| buggy and poorly conceived in many ways. The OLPC was
| also released right before cheap netbooks and tablets hit
| the market, obviating the project's main value
| proposition.
|
| But other things worked well, and the screen was one of
| them, at least for my purposes. I lived in Miami at the
| time, and it was only with the OLPC laptop that I was
| able to code while sitting out on my porch. I fixed the
| keyboard problem by plugging a mechanical keyboard into
| the USB port, and avoided the custom OS by dropping into
| the shell and telnetting into my workstation. Even with
| those awkward hacks, I still enjoyed coding on it because
| it let me do something I couldn't do otherwise.
|
| The relative cost of the screen wasn't an issue for me. I
| would have paid quite a bit more than I did, just to have
| a working laptop (or even a terminal) that was usable in
| the bright sunlight. And buying an OLPC was meant to be
| more of a charitable gift anyway.
|
| From your comments on Jepsen, it sounds to me like one of
| the challenges that Pixel Qi's technology faced was that
| it was promoted by the wrong messenger. Maybe you're
| right that there wouldn't have been a larger market for
| it, even if it had been rolled out with industry support
| as a commercial project instead of as part of an NGO. I
| don't know, though.
|
| A screen that can be seen in the sun without a backlight
| draws less power, and most people use their mobile
| devices and laptops outside at least part of the time.
| Even with a full backlight, most screens today cannot be
| used in direct sunlight, and any outdoor use draws more
| power than indoor use, not less, which is the reverse of
| what it should be. I found the experience of using the
| OLPC screen perfect for what I wanted to do with it, and
| I think there would be a large enough niche to support
| reasonable unit economics if the product were marketed
| the right way to the right people.
|
| Apologies for getting Jepsen's name wrong, by the way.
| Blame it on my typing out my first comment out on my
| phone.
| captainmuon wrote:
| We had a customer who wanted to use a transfexive display.
| Huge project, some kind of outdoor advertizing in asia. We
| got prototypes from a major display manufacturer (can't say
| which but I think there are not so many) and well... it
| looked like they just took a normal LCD and left out the
| backlight. Readability and contrast was really bad in any
| light.
|
| A trainee acidentially broke the display but he was lucky:
| the customer wasn't interested in it anymore after seeing a
| demo. I don't know what became of the project.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Generally speaking, you can find plenty of daylight readable
| portables today: They're sold as "rugged" laptops, as they tend
| to be found in fleet vehicles.
| luke2m wrote:
| I wish someone made netbooks again.
| dTal wrote:
| GPD do an impressive line of pocketable x86 computers. Some of
| them have keyboards designed to be touch-typed on, though I
| can't comment on their ergonomics.
|
| I _can_ comment on the ergonomics of the GPD MicroPC, which I
| got a few days ago and have been using ever since: it 's
| _awesome_. I can do about 50 wpm on the thumb keyboard, which I
| 'm sure is as good as I ever got on those tiny EeePC keyboards.
| It's very satisfying to hold and use, and it comfortably
| supports a full Plasma desktop. Look no further for a pocket
| laptop.
| aasasd wrote:
| I had a Samsung NC10, 10-inch, and touch-typed on it just
| fine. Perhaps 10" is larger than what some people mean by
| 'netbook', but it fit in a shoulder bag and weighed about 1.3
| kg, so was pretty light. Guess Macbook Air and copycats
| snatched this form-factor, so they stopped being called
| 'netbooks'.
| cout wrote:
| The NC10 was a great device for its time -- lightweight,
| long battery life, nearly full size keyboard. I used it as
| my primary computing device for years, and would still be
| using it had it not suffered the pinched display cable
| problem, and I broke the hinge trying to fix it.
|
| What killed the netbook was the ultrabook -- similar weight
| and battery life, but with a larger display and full size
| keyboard.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Netbooks had one enormous advantage: they were cheap. That
| also means they are expendable. I used one (Acre Aspire
| One) as my mobile workhorse for quite some time and it
| never felt unusable. Of course, the tests an i5 runs in 30
| seconds the Atom runs in 2 minutes, but you can spend that
| time thinking what to do next.
|
| Now you can get a reasonable entry level laptop for more or
| less the same price, so, even if the name is no longer a
| thing, the product is still quite available.
| iagovar wrote:
| What do you do with such PC? I mean, I'm pretty sure it's
| very difficult to code, use excel, and the like.
| dTal wrote:
| You'd be amazed. The screen is high-res, the touchpad is
| precise, and the keyboard is complete. You occasionally
| find key combos that are hard to type - switching VTs
| springs to mind - but otherwise, it's almost as usable as a
| full size laptop. I haven't tried it yet, but I think
| (light) coding on it would be quite practical.
|
| Actually, let's try it: #include <stdio.h>
| int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { while(1) {
| printf("All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!\n");
| } }
|
| Seems okay.
| iagovar wrote:
| IDK man, less than 13" is a struggle for me, specially
| outdoors. If you need to scroll, or change between stuff
| and such, I don't how such small device won't get in the
| way.
|
| It looks cool, but a bit casual.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I've used a 12-inch MacBook for years as my daily driver
| for backend web development. It's perfectly usable if you
| don't run any Electron crap or Docker (on Linux it would
| actually be fine, but Docker for Mac is terrible) and the
| portability and battery life is amazing.
| gumby wrote:
| Like an iPad: read some web pages, mail, etc; a little
| light editing. But in a lightweight, long battery life with
| the benefits of a keyboard rather than the crappy virtual
| keyboard.
|
| I used to have an Apple "MacBook" which at 2 lbs (900 g)
| was great for carrying around, flying all over the world,
| etc. As I develop in Emacs, development was great, though
| complication was slow; I'd often compile in the cloud. It
| was a great machine. I use an m1 air these days which is
| half a pound heavier and is a great development machine.
|
| Despite what I said about crappy virtual keyboards I am
| typing this comment on about 450 g of ipad.
| GoToRO wrote:
| The only reason I bought a Mac: lightweight, no fans, "full"
| computer. In general I am not a fan of Apple ecosystem but this
| one really fits my need.
| mfashby wrote:
| Pinebook pro is serving me fairly well in this area. Chromebook
| like specs but normal desktop Linux.
| ekianjo wrote:
| A bit short on memory and hardware support is still a gamble.
| rektide wrote:
| tablets and Bluetooth keyboard have filled the role well for
| me.
| pjmlp wrote:
| My 1215B is still working for most workloads, except Rust even
| with cranelift, unless I feel like killing the battery.
|
| My Asus S6 is also quite alright (with a keyboard case).
|
| If I would be starting from scratch today I would probably get
| an Air or a Surface.
| websites420 wrote:
| Really? I recall netbooks being pretty bad. Cramped keyboards,
| short battery life, weak processors... the worst of all worlds,
| really. What attracts you to them?
| captainmuon wrote:
| Not the parent, but back then they had longer battery life
| than conventional laptops, 93% size keyboard, were really
| cheap (great for me as a student) and were fine for browsing
| the net (for about a year, then the websites became suddenly
| a lot more complex) and remote work.
|
| I remember trying to buy an eeePC in a computer store and
| when I said it is for programming the guy there didn't want
| to sell me one but tried to sell me a 17" monstrosity. But I
| needed it for travel and to do office and coding work and
| most of the time I used SSH to a more powerful PC anyway.
|
| The only stupid thing was that Microsoft artificially limited
| netbooks to low resolution and low RAM. You could apparently
| either build a netbook, or a fully-featured laptop, but not a
| small-format laptop without getting some kind of license
| penalty. Same a couple of years later when Intel and MS
| mandated that Ultrabooks have glossy touchscreens and motion
| sensors and could be maxially _X_ mm thick.
| 13415 wrote:
| I'm writing novels outside in my spare time. Unfortunately,
| for people like me there are no reasonable options,
| especially since I need Windows (special software). The
| SunBook were too expensive to me (+tax and international
| delivery). I've given up by now and just buy the cheapest
| smallest laptop I can find, plus a power pack. It makes
| continuous backups so if it explodes in the sun I wouldn't
| lose too much work.
|
| My EePC was better than what I have now, at least it had a
| matte screen and 12 hours battery life with a replacement
| battery, but unfortunately was stolen.
| vnxli wrote:
| Same. With a full OS. Chromebooks don't cut it for me
| maccard wrote:
| They're not 300 bucks, buy a surface go or a MacBook air
| ticks all the boxes of what I want in a netbook!
| cstross wrote:
| A number of Chinese companies have colonized that form factor:
|
| GPD: https://www.gpd.hk/product
|
| One Netbook: https://1netbook.com/
|
| Both companies typically launch new products with a
| kickstarter/promo on Indiegogo, to generate buzz, then sell
| through retail channels such as DroiX: https://droix.net/ and
| Ali Express.
|
| Support is ... well, it's what you'd expect for a smallish
| Chinese company launching via a kickstarter. On the other hand,
| their machines are fairly well-designed and well-made (for
| products from a smallish Chinese etcetera): I'm currently
| running a One Netbook One Mix 4, a 10" ultrabook (quad-core i7,
| 16Gb RAM, 1Tb SSD) with about the same footprint as an old Asus
| Eeee PC 1000, but much _much_ thinner, lighter, and more
| powerful -- it works fine.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I just want to sit on my deck and code on a sunny day. Why does
| the market not see me?
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| I have an OLPC I found on ebay- by sheer luck I managed to find
| an XO-4, the newer ARM-based model. It's a slow, humble machine,
| but it's rugged as hell, usable in sunlight, gets about 5 hours
| of battery life in realistic conditions, and doesn't have any
| trouble running vim, gcc, git, or ssh. I would never use it as my
| daily-driver, but it is a nice distraction-free way to do a
| little tinkering in the great outdoors. Would recommend.
| tbrock wrote:
| At the bottom:
|
| > IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the
| Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.
| iagovar wrote:
| I'm submitting this mostly as a curiosity, but I'm sorry, this
| product is deprecated due to Pixel Qi closing shop. I wonder why
| this projects never take off, while I see plenty of people
| interested in an outdoors-capable laptop.
|
| It seems that there's still some movement in the transflective
| screen space, but always in other devices.
|
| If someone here in HN has the money and the willpower to do it,
| it would be more than enough to provide screen replacements for
| thinkpads and other popular laptops IMO.
|
| I currently do some work in the outdoors. I love to somewhere
| surrounded by nature, open my laptop and use my phone as hotspot,
| but I feel the fatigue after some time.
|
| A transflective screen for my x260 could be a game changer. A
| color e-ink with a decent refresh rate too (although improbable,
| but there's a community trying to make it real
| https://forum.ei2030.org/t/proposal-ei-2030-the-community-bu...).
|
| I've been looking for this kind of solutions for years, and it
| seems there's plenty of people looking for something similar too.
| bjornjajayaja wrote:
| I had one of those display panels on a rugged Win7 tablet and
| it was pretty impressive.
| iagovar wrote:
| Would you say it could be possible to code with such display
| if it was attached to a laptop?
| wzdd wrote:
| I have an old Acer Aspire One netbook which I modded with a
| Pixel Qi display. It is definitely usable for programming
| in direct sunlight, though the display is physically too
| small to get comfortable doing a lot of programming on it.
| Funnily enough, the major problem is _not enough_ sunlight
| -- indoors, you can use the backlight, and direct sun
| provides a good contrast ratio outside, but in the shade
| outdoors, particularly after my eyes have adjusted for
| sunlight, the screen becomes difficult to see.
| iagovar wrote:
| Hmm, I see. Did you have problems to adjust to other
| normal screens too, or it was just with that Pixel Qi
| one?
| wzdd wrote:
| Just the Pixel Qi. In indirect light, the contrast ratio
| is much lower than, say, a Kindle, which is itself much
| lower than paper. So unless the sun is directly on it,
| it's harder for sun-adjusted eyes to read than a Kindle,
| or than it is for indoors-adjusted eyes to read a normal
| backlit LCD.
| marvindanig wrote:
| > I love to somewhere surrounded by nature, open my laptop and
| use my phone as hotspot, but I feel the fatigue after some
| time...
|
| I think this has more value than just working somewhere in the
| arms of nature. The fact that we no longer see sunsets as often
| as we should and with mobile phones and modern IPS panel
| screens constantly feeding daylight (morninglight) spectrum
| through our eyes into our brains, we stifle our body clock [1]
| too easily.
|
| A screen that works outside of the covered space or even in the
| sunroom of my house would mean a lot. It will offer better
| sleep patterns than today.
|
| [1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2017/press-
| releas...
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Hi, I and many others share your desire to work outside and not
| feel fatigued after working with a digital device.
|
| Making a quality transflective screen suitable for laptops and
| having good viewing angles is a complex manufacturing process;
| companies are working on it. I hope in the future this becomes
| viable.
|
| At EI2030, we are working on making an open-source and open-
| hardware e-ink laptop and tackling the challenges. Our first
| pre-prototype Archer is almost complete, and we are going to
| start working on our second prototype.
|
| Github to Archer: https://github.com/EI2030/Archer
|
| Talk at foss-north 2021, "Building an Open-Source Eink Laptop."
| https://foss-north.se/2021/speakers-and-talks.html#asoto
|
| Zulip community dedicated to the project
| https://ei2030.zulipchat.com/
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I'd really really love a Qi or even better, an eInk laptop.
| Black and white would be fine. Colour eInk has too bad refresh
| rates anyway(or useless colours with LCD overlay like eInk
| Kaleido) For text terminal work it would be fine and the laptop
| could be really low spec (think raspberry pi kind of specs)
|
| I live in Spain and it would be really nice being able to do
| some light work outside in the sun. You can do it with some
| regular laptops (especially with HDR displays) but it will kill
| battery life and you'll still end up squinting. It's really sad
| that PixelQi went out of business.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| You can get pretty close with an Android eInk tablet like the
| Boox Note Air and a Bluetooth keyboard with Termux.
| dmos62 wrote:
| It says something about the laptop market that you have to buy a
| complete laptop when you just need a sunlight-proof display. With
| desktop computers, this would just be a monitor, because they're
| modular.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-30 23:01 UTC)