[HN Gopher] The Modos Paper Laptop
___________________________________________________________________
The Modos Paper Laptop
Author : robin_reala
Score : 294 points
Date : 2022-05-16 06:53 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.modos.tech)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.modos.tech)
| bichonnages wrote:
| I wish there was a dedicated distraction-free OS. I would just
| install it on my old MacBook Air.
|
| A word processor and a basic file system (with possibly a link to
| Dropbox or something). That's it.
|
| That would be amazing.
|
| [edit] as mentioned here:
| http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/2019/07/distraction-f...
| Grumbledour wrote:
| I have been wondering if something like https://gtoolkit.com/
| would fit the bill, though I have to admit I find it a bit hard
| to grok. But having a form of interactive notebook running as
| an OS on a simple device could be a really powerful computing
| experience.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Hi, thanks for sharing the Glamorous Toolkit; I have looked
| into it in the past, and it reminds me of Emacs 'modability'.
|
| I'm working on a blog post about what a dedicated distraction-
| free OS would look like.
| Loughla wrote:
| Oh man. I would absolutely buy this today if it was available.
| Switching from a tablet to a remarkable helped my work focus one
| million percent. Switching to that from a laptop for everything
| else can only help, too (he says while writing this on said
| laptop instead of prepping for the next meeting).
| JoelMcCracken wrote:
| I really want this. My daily driver is a macbook pro and I use a
| boox max lumi as my main programming display. I'd love to have a
| laptop with this built in.
| nerdy_nerd101 wrote:
| I was legit dreaming about a laptop with e-ink display to help
| with eye-strain and then saw this post. Hope this product gets to
| market and sells enough units so that it becomes more common!
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words, it means a lot; I and others
| share your desire to use a laptop with an e-ink display and we
| are working it.
| microflash wrote:
| After years of trying different things, I have come to a
| conclusion that any variation of technology is not going to help
| from distractions until and unless you excercise discipline and
| restraint. Dialing back from the things that distract you can
| work with any technology. Healthy eating, excercising and sleep
| can do wonders. Walking away from "digital" world for some time
| can work too.
| Loughla wrote:
| For me, it's like quitting smoking. I couldn't do it cold
| turkey, it took trying many different things to 'wean' myself
| off of nicotine.
|
| Technology is the same. I noticed I was getting distracted when
| I carried a tablet for work. So I replaced it with a
| remarkable. No more easy distraction = no more distraction.
|
| So for some (especially those of us with addictive
| personalities), it is about finding supplementary aides to help
| with that discipline and restraint.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > any variation of technology is not going to help from
| distractions until and unless you excercise discipline and
| restraint
|
| There's definitely a feedback cycle here though. Swap your
| dazzling iPhone 14 Pro Max for an iPhone 4S and then change the
| display to greyscale and see just how fast this technological
| solution reduces your levels of distraction.
|
| Of course as you say it alone isn't a panacea: doing that is
| painful. But live with the pain long enough, and you've now
| used technology as a crutch to change your brain to expect the
| distraction less.
|
| Here are some other technological solutions that I have found
| helpful:
|
| * News Feed Eradicator: a browser plugin that hides those
| algorithmic news feeds that are the cocaine of the internet
|
| * Unhook - Remove YouTube Recommended Videos: removes the
| sidebar on YouTube
|
| * Podcasts - Even if you "already know" all the psychological
| tricks the world is pulling on you, your brain is programmable
| and if you simply listen and re-listen to Tristan Harris on a
| regular basis this imprints these lessons into your head. That,
| in turn, provides a well of motivation that can be used when
| the lure of addiction presents itself.
| incanus77 wrote:
| > There's definitely a feedback cycle here though. Swap your
| dazzling iPhone 14 Pro Max for an iPhone 4S and then change
| the display to greyscale and see just how fast this
| technological solution reduces your levels of distraction.
|
| This worked for me. A few years back, I turned down
| everything (black background, no icons on home screen, no
| auto-wake on raise) on my iPhone SE (original version) and
| removed all social and mail apps. I'm still on this phone,
| both for this and for (small) size reasons.
|
| Other than direct texts from people who need to reach me
| (which I liberally put into Do Not Disturb from time to
| time), I don't get any notifications on my device.
|
| It's wonderful.
|
| I eventually brought back Mail, mostly because I was using it
| for address references or communications during things like
| Craigslist transactions, but I no longer check it unless I'm
| looking for something in particular.
|
| Along these lines, for all apps I install, I deny
| notifications by default, then consider (and often, don't)
| enabling them for functionality that I need later on.
|
| Though I don't do as much as I used to (I've mixed in many
| other platforms), I do contract iOS development from time to
| time. I typically use my (also 5+ year old) iPad Pro for
| either iPhone/iPad development. When I need actual phone
| testing, while my SE is a little slow, the bigger problem I
| run into there more frequently is screen size considerations
| -- even some of Apple's apps assume you have more screen real
| estate and cut things off awkwardly.
|
| > Of course as you say it alone isn't a panacea: doing that
| is painful. But live with the pain long enough, and you've
| now used technology as a crutch to change your brain to
| expect the distraction less.
|
| Absolutely -- a great way to put it.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I can also attest to removing non-essential apps and using
| my original iPhone SE in grayscale mode to make it less
| appealing to distract myself with social media etc.
|
| I don't know what I'll do when this phone dies. I need a
| modern smartphone for cellular connectivity, messaging
| applications, photos, and music. But I can't bring myself
| to buy a giant screen, 6GB+ of RAM, and lose out on
| features like the headphone jack and my fingerprint reader
| that serve me well every day.
| 30944836 wrote:
| I did almost the same as you, particularly with
| notifications. It made me realize how much of my attention
| I had given to random apps. Now the default "any app can
| ping me at any time" just seems insane and stressful.
| rmellow wrote:
| Reading on a fully featured tablet with a browser, apps,
| notifications vs reading on a special purpose device is a world
| of difference when it comes to attention for me.
| spoonjim wrote:
| What matters for something like this is not the idea but the
| execution. This page is little more than "I'm going to build a
| battery car" or "I'm going to build a reusable rocket." What you
| want to see instead is descriptions of the hardware projects that
| the founding team has successfully shipped.
|
| A major hint of trouble is "we're accepting applications." A team
| that is likely to succeed here would have a core founding team in
| place, not just a Wordpress post.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback, it's appreciated, and we are
| working on it.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Isn't this just a rehashing of the value-less pop business
| advice, "In order to be big, be big already'. It's an open-
| source venture, crowdsourcing talent. They're not making
| statements that they have to be the greatest thing since sliced
| bread.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if something like this would fit easily within the
| Framework, uh, framework.
| michaelmior wrote:
| That was one of my first thoughts too. It would be awesome if
| this could simply be yet another display module for the
| Framework Laptop. It seems as though Framework uses EDP
| (Embedded Display Port) so an e-Ink display of the correct
| dimensions which uses EDP would work in theory. Although I'd
| imagine there would be some work to be done to make it function
| _well_.
| rcoder wrote:
| The physical connector is unfortunately not an indicator that
| the hardware and software needed to drive an e-Ink display
| will be similar to an LCD. Sadly, e-Ink displays require
| custom drivers to function at all, and in particular partial
| refresh (needed to get sub-second updates) requires targeting
| known dirty regions of the display and updating just
| those...hence the extra ghosting in the higher-speed mode of
| most ebook readers & etc. that use EPDs.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I understand that. My point was that the Framework Laptop
| uses a standard connector so it's at least possible in
| theory. (Perhaps EDP is very common, I'm not familiar with
| the space at all.) In any case, partial refresh is
| obviously not something that one could expect to work
| without additional effort.
| voidhorse wrote:
| I love the look of e-ink but I've been skeptical of using it for
| work ever since trying a few devices with e-ink screens--the
| latency of an eink screen can be a lot higher if the manufacturer
| doesn't get it right, which is fine for some use cases but can be
| really annoying for others, such as typing.
|
| For those looking for a distraction free, portable writing
| experience specifically, check out the pomera dm 200. It does not
| use eink but has a UI that sports a very similar look and feel to
| eink devices. It's responsive, extremely portable, and only
| supports writing text. It's Japanese, so the UI is in Japanese
| only, but you can write using English characters.
| elnatro wrote:
| I would buy this in an instant.
|
| A separated device to write my blog or some short stories would
| be a godsend to me. With each year it passes, I feel my
| concentration vanish more and more. A distraction-free device
| could help me regain some concentration (I think).
| kazinator wrote:
| Speaking of distraction; why post a photo of an IBM ThinkPad?
| noir_lord wrote:
| I like https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ that and since I'm on
| linux I can silence anything I want to turn off - it works
| pretty well.
| teddyh wrote:
| Start Emacs (as a graphical window, not in a terminal),
| maximize it, install darkroom:
| https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/darkroom.html
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Hi, elnatro
|
| Thank you for your words and for describing your use case. For
| writing, I tend to go analog. I use paper and pencil to write a
| rough draft and get my ideas on paper; the next stage is to
| type up the thoughts digitally and use a low-tech device like
| an AlphaSmart Neo, or Pomera DM30. I've found breaking up the
| writing process into steps and using a dedicated device works
| for me.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Maybe the FreeWrite Traveler is what you're looking for?
|
| https://getfreewrite.com/collections/writing-tools/products/...
| jseliger wrote:
| I hope the latency is better than about two years ago, when I
| tried one.
| robinsoh wrote:
| > I would buy this in an instant.
|
| Except, if it did not achieve your expectations. Note the
| article is short on facts, high on marketing verbiage. If I'm
| not mistaken this is the same blogger, Alex Soto who previously
| made a lot of claims and when I challenged him on it, rapidly
| backtracked. Same guy previously claimed that E-Ink was a
| patent abuser, and another similarly named guy who headed some
| kickstarter program claimed E-Ink was suppressing his business
| and that was why he wasn't able to deliver on previous
| products, but when I asked him to substantiate it, he changed
| his blog post.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26245563#26249219
| torgoguys wrote:
| Yes, that's the same Alex Soto for the link you provided.
| However, I'm guessing whatever Kickstarter you're talking
| about is a different guy (I would probably know if Alex had
| done a Kickstarter because of an online community I'm in).
|
| I've talked with him about e-ink projects before (because
| I've got a similar project brewing). You previously caught
| him on the steep upward slope learning about e-ink where he
| had some incorrect information (e.g., your link), but he
| always took corrections and has kept at trying to make the
| e-ink laptop vision happen.
|
| He is a true open-source advocate and while I don't know
| about Modos beyond the website, I trust he really is hoping
| to help such a project see the light of day and empower
| others to be able to make their own e-ink laptops.
| [deleted]
| earth_walker wrote:
| I immediately thought it was a joke myself - besides the
| picture of the thinkpad with a bolted on e-reader on a messy
| desk, the laptop name is "Sodom" backwards and the writer's
| name is an anagram for "A Sex Tool".
|
| Either someone's taking the piss, or terrible at naming
| things...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So many of these marketing-slick web sites show up on HN....
|
| Some guy in his basement that cobbled together a working
| e-Ink word processor would be much more interesting to me.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Some guy in his basement that cobbled together a working
| e-Ink word processor would be much more interesting to me_
|
| That's exactly what this looks like. It looks like someone
| glued an e-Ink display into an old ThinkPad T41.
|
| Zoom in on the bezels in the up-close view:
| https://uploads-
| ssl.webflow.com/61a133075b8ce58a48f1bed1/61e...
|
| The southeast corner looks like there's a battery indicator
| half-covered up.
|
| It even has a IBM ThinkPad logo and a "T41" in the corner
| and machine screws holding the screen together.
| johnobrien1010 wrote:
| I'm one of those guys who cobbled something together in my
| basement.
|
| I'm on my mobile so don't have a picture but will post one
| later.
|
| One surprising thing to me?
|
| I don't use it. At least, not much in comparison to my
| actual laptop.
|
| It reminds me of folding keyboards for cell phones. I've
| bought a couple and thought, these are great, they'll make
| inputting text on a cell phone so much easier... except I
| don't end up carrying them around in my pocket, and so end
| up typing on my mobile phone using the touchscreen just
| like everyone else.
|
| People think that a distraction free device will allow them
| to achieve their goals but it is actually the discipline to
| do the work which will allow them to achieve their goals;
| the device probably won't change that.
| voidhorse wrote:
| Exactly. I've tried quite a few "distraction free"
| solutions. The problem isn't finding the right device,
| it's finding the willpower to force yourself to write
| even when you're coming up empty.
| Grumbledour wrote:
| There have been in few in the last years. Here are two from
| the top of my head.
| https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/
| https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/02/14/the-spudwrite-single-
| pu...
|
| Also, you might like to check out the pomera
| https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/digital-memo-pomera-
| dm3...
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Why not buy a Brother WP-95 Word Processor?
| bluescrn wrote:
| You could make any PC or laptop into a 'low distraction' device
| by disconnecting it from the Internet and having a minimum
| install of only the required productivity software.
|
| It won't free you from the distraction of your other devices
| though, as you've probably got a fully-online phone within
| reach.
| Grumbledour wrote:
| I got similar feelings as the OP though. It's not just about
| notifications popping up or having a browser at hand. I feel
| the epaper display puts me in a different frame of mind. A
| "Not sitting at the computer" state, in which I think
| differently. So I always wondered if writing on an epaper
| display would not feel entirely different than looking at an
| empty page in a word processor. I certainly feel the
| difference when reading a book an my ereader vs. my
| phone/tablet.
| Kerrick wrote:
| I have an IBM Correcting Selectric III for this exact
| purpose. I do find it helps.
|
| It's not very portable, though. I just picked up a Sears
| Citation for that, but the 1960s typewriter definition of
| portable is much closer to "you can take it on a trip and
| type in your hotel room" than it is to "you can take it on
| a hike and type under a tree."
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I also have a Correcting Selectric III and to say that
| it's not very portable is as much an understatement as
| saying a boat anchor is not very slim or lightweight!
|
| For actually portable typewriters I've really enjoyed my
| Royal Mercury and Smith-Corona Skyriter, both of which
| are usable on a lap on a bench (or under a tree).
| mackrevinack wrote:
| any time i read hackernews stuff on my eink i always spend
| a lot less time reading overall, mainly because its a lot
| more inconvenient to use. but that's a good thing some
| times!
| jolmg wrote:
| If YouTube, other videos, or fast-moving games is the source
| of their distraction, then an e-ink monitor would provide a
| hardware obstacle rather than a pure software one which can
| more easily be overcome.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I usually just turn my phone off if I need to focus. If
| someone /really/ needs to reach me they could always call my
| workplace. And I avoid phone communication at all cost
| anyway.
|
| I realise this is not an option for everyone of course.
| There's also apps that allow you to time lock your phone with
| exceptions for important things. Protip: set it up so you can
| get around it by rebooting the phone, in case you forgot to
| whitelist something, etc. Smartphones are painfully slow to
| boot anyway, so it still helps discourage the constant
| distraction if you can muster the will power to not do the
| reboot. More effort means you consider it rather than
| reflexively do it.
| yur3i__ wrote:
| Yeah I feel like this kind of thing is a bit of redundant, if
| you were going to be distracted by looking at HN on your
| laptop, you probably will do the same on your phone
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's some truth to your comment, and the one threat you'll
| never run away from is yourself, but it misses a lot.
|
| I've been using an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi as my daily driver for
| about a year. It's an e-ink Android tablet, principally
| intended as an e-book reader (which I use it for), though it
| also serves quite well for podcasts, web browsing, and
| general terminal work (Termux / SSH).
|
| If I really want to minimise distractions, I'll disable
| networking. I can read local content (articles, or my Pocket
| stash), which is already ample distraction. Or play back
| downloaded podcasts.
|
| It is far more usable outdoors or under bright lighting than
| any laptop or tablet, which is itself highly useful.
|
| Battery life is quite good _when reading ebooks_. This
| involves disabling Bluetooth, WiFi, and if possible, the
| Backlight, and avoiding screen repaints. When used for
| podcasts or browsing, CPU drain is fairly substantial, though
| I can get well over a day 's use per charge typically.
|
| There's no social media or any other apps on the device. My
| one authenticating app is Pocket.
|
| The UI is not entirely as distraction-free as I'd like, _but
| it is far more so than any other device I 've owned in
| decades_.
|
| Lacking colour and high-speed animations _is_ of and by
| itself a major win on distraction-free status. So,
| interestingly enough, is the ability to take freehand notes
| on the device. I 'd not anticipated doing that much, it's
| turned out to be a significant use.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I see plenty of AlphaSmart NEO's on eBay going for roughly $30
| to $70. I picked one up a few years back and it is excellent
| for typing.
|
| Plug it into a computer via USB and it will declare itself a
| keyboard, and with one keystroke, "type" all your text into
| your computer.
|
| Very clever.
| classichasclass wrote:
| The best AlphaSmart is still the Dana, though. The closest
| thing to a PalmOS laptop and everything that makes it an
| AlphaSmart, too, with the same great keyboard and "typing"
| feature.
| steveylang wrote:
| The Dana is great, but the regular Alphasmarts are
| particularly rock-solid and 2 AA batteries will last you
| over a year.
|
| The Dana touchscreen isn't as contrasty, the backlight eats
| battery, and if you use up all your batteries you will lose
| your data without backups. It's all quite manageable of
| course (since as you say it's just a Palm PDA with a
| keyboard) and has much more functionality, but not as
| bulletproof.
|
| (I'm just happy to participate in a Alphasmart discussion
| LOL.)
| na85 wrote:
| May I suggest WriteRoom?
|
| https://github.com/joostkremers/writeroom-mode
| elnatro wrote:
| Do software solutions can work? I'm not sure, besides I'm
| sorry but... I haven't used emacs, would you say it is
| worthy?
| na85 wrote:
| >Do software solutions can work?
|
| Realistically speaking it's your personal discipline and
| work ethic that's going to make it or break it, whether or
| not you have a hardware or software solution.
|
| But I think the answer to this is "yes".
|
| >I haven't used emacs, would you say it is worthy?
|
| Absolutely. Don't fall into the trap of having 4000-line
| configuration files. Emacs works well out of the box, and
| you can enable something called "CUA mode" to make the
| hotkeys for e.g. copy+paste work more like Windows, if
| that's what you want.
| nitin-pai wrote:
| The idea has potential.
|
| It will appeal to people who have to do a lot of reading, writing
| and thinking; and who are currently distracted by a lot of
| applications and features on their all-purpose devices.
|
| Theoretically, you can turn off the Wi-Fi, put the writing app in
| focus mode, turn off notifications and avoid googling and looking
| at email and twitter. In practice, it is nearly impossible to do
| so. Which is why there are so many focus apps, pomodoro timers
| etc. It takes a lot of will power to avoid distractions.
|
| Unlike a Kindle this thing can be used to key in text.
|
| It certainly has a niche. What we don't know is how big that
| niche is, and whether it will cause others to adopt non-
| distractive devices.
| binkHN wrote:
| I, basically, had this back in college. I realize I'm dating
| myself now, but, back before laptops were inexpensively
| available, I had a "mobile electric typewriter." No Internet and
| I simply used it to write my term papers while away from school
| or home/on the beach. It was somewhat bulky and had a small
| screen, but I was able to write my papers without white-out and I
| had no distractions from the technology.
| blowski wrote:
| How does it compare to, say, a remarkable tablet? I found the
| latter great for writing and reading well-formatted pages. But
| reading a typical whizzbang webpage or using an app to be
| painful. The lack of a mouse made life particularly difficult.
| Lio wrote:
| I guess one of the big differences would be the laptop form
| factor and having a keyboard.
|
| I'm less bothered about surfing the web on something like this.
|
| When writing I find it easier to type and edit what I've put
| down.
|
| Not sure if Remarkable has an optional keyboard or not but I
| think using a pen requires more thought overhead for me, if
| that makes any sense.
| rcoder wrote:
| No direct keyboard support on the reMarkable, but you can
| trivially get a root shell over USB-C -- while charging,
| unlike older USB OTG setups on phones and tablets with one
| micro-USB connector -- so it's totally something you can hack
| together.
|
| None of the bundled software is designed for using a
| keyboard, of course, so it's going to be just as DIY as the
| very earliest Linux handhelds. (Anyone else remember the
| awful HP "iPaq" PDA Linux environment? I set one up because I
| could, and them never see the device again because the UX and
| battery life were so bad.)
| will0 wrote:
| I have a Onyx Boox Note Air, and it's amazing for reading /
| writing. I have an SSH app on it (it's Android) and the
| experience starts to fall apart there. I can type significantly
| faster than it can refresh and render the characters.
|
| That being said I'm sure there's some magic you could do to
| reduce latency here if you tried. I know it does some magic
| behind the scenes with the drawing to improve responsiveness.
| pjerem wrote:
| > I know it does some magic behind the scenes with the
| drawing to improve responsiveness.
|
| The way I understand the technology : refresh time looks
| related to how many pixels you draw at once. When you write
| with a pen, very few pixels have to change state on a given
| unit of time (the pixels under the stylus) the "magic" behind
| fast writing on e-ink is to draw the pixels under the pen as
| fast as possible then if needed add details once the user
| stops writing.
|
| The problem with your terminal is once you reach the bottom
| of the screen and you start scrolling : from now on, every
| new line will redraw the entire screen. Now you are exactly
| drawing as much pixels as any e-book which is ... slow.
|
| You would need a terminal without scrolling (or some mid-page
| scrolling). This could probably be done but you would
| probably have problems with a lot of cli programs.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I would buy this indeed. I like working outside and it's not very
| good at the moment. I think projects like this should do this as
| Frame.work 'plug-ins' though. We really need some type of open
| 'shelf parts' company that just makes for a hardware / software
| ecosystem of compatible hardware and software (drivers).
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback. When we started working on this
| project, the frame.work was not available, or it's mainboard;
| we are exploring this approach as a possibility.
| tapia wrote:
| I came here just to say this too. They don't need to reinvent
| the whole wheel again. In this case all it is needed is to
| change the screen and add the Electrophoretic Display
| Controller. That would be the most efficient approach.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Someone will do it, but this is the second eInk article in a
| month or so from different people. If they only would spend
| their valuable time on making a screen for the Frame.work and
| post the schematics in GitHub. They can sell it and make
| profits because someone needs to make that assembly as an
| easy addon for Frame.work; they might even sell it as option?
|
| In the previous discussion, I also learned about RLCD which I
| vaguely knew about when Qi Pixel was a thing but it seems to
| have improved. So one of those for the frame.work too, and
| all is good!
| eBombzor wrote:
| On Windows: Settings > Accessibility > Color Filters > Grayscale
| helps a lot for me.
| yayr wrote:
| Is it still worth designing new low/medium performance laptops
| that are not based on a SOC? I mean, the energy requirements for
| dedicated CPU/GPU units are just not good I guess
| avgcorrection wrote:
| What's interesting about this is that it would pose a similar
| challenge to text editing that teletypes did back in the day. The
| machines where you had to print stuff to paper (no screen). With
| Ed, Ex, and those kinds of editors. Much less extreme though.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Yes, I agree, and that is a good comparison, and a lot to learn
| from that era of computing. One of the areas we are exploring
| is building native e-ink applications.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| After reading the article and the Hacker News comments, I have to
| wonder if the approach is wrong.
|
| Instead of using e-ink which does have it's merits but has a very
| poor refresh rate, why not use an algorithm to adjust typical
| laptop screens to be more visible in sunlight conditions.
|
| Second thought, smartphones are really on the cutting edge of
| display technology. If e-ink was viable, wouldn't we be seeing at
| least some e-ink smartphones?
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| The refresh rate is no longer a product, look for Boox and
| Dasung PC displays.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I have not seen those. But based on my experience with other
| eInk displays, I suspect they are downplaying their refresh
| rate issues. I don't doubt they are better than previous eInk
| displays, but I suspect no one would watch a movie on those
| eInk displays and claim it's anything close to, say, OLED for
| example.
|
| Good enough? I would have to try one out.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| You have people reviewing them in YT. LGTM.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| The refresh rate is improved on screens like the box Mira and
| dasung notereader, but is definitely still slower than an lcd
| and will have ghosting/other effects.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I am curious what sort of "algorithm" you imagine would work
| around the essential issue of trying to make a screen bright
| enough to overpower sunlight falling on it.
|
| I take my laptop out to the park a lot and my primary solutions
| are to sit in the shade, and stick a little shadow box to my
| laptop's lid via the magnets it uses to tell when it's closed.
| It's barely enough to make it usable; you have to fight against
| the fact that the outside world can be a _lot_ brighter than
| any lamp suitable for sticking inside a portable computer.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| E-ink smartphones do exist.
|
| https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| YotaPhone-style devices always seemed like such a great idea.
| The back of a phone is 90% useless, and the front of a phone
| is largely useless in direct sunlight.
|
| Making the back of a phone an e-reader just sounds awesome,
| especially for larger phones.
| robin_reala wrote:
| The middle ground was the old Pixel Qi transflective displays,
| but those never came to market in any great quantities.
| Vekz wrote:
| The mental model of eink "has very poor refresh rates" is
| outdated. There are Eink displays on the market by Dasung and
| Onyx which easily do 40FPS refresh. The Modos project is using
| the same display modules and dithering algorithm as these
| monitors.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I would love this.
|
| However, Waveshare whose epaper displays I use a lot always say
| they are not suitable for working in direct sunlight. Which is
| kinda the one thing such a laptop would really shine at.
|
| So, would this be suitable?
|
| PS: Front View and Side View show a svelte laptop but the
| "Chassis" photo shows a Lenovo/IBM T41? I assume this is a
| prototype and not the actual chassis.
|
| I wonder if they would sell the display they put in those T41
| prototypes, I still have a T42 lying around that would come in
| handy for this.
| phil294 wrote:
| Sorry I don't have an answer, only more questions on this. I
| also read about this limitation. Perhaps it's more of a
| warranty issue and direct sunlight exposure merely reduces the
| lifespan by a few percent. Given that you have been using
| Waveshare displays a lot already, what are your observations on
| this? Is it really problematic?
|
| I've been using an ancient ebook reader for reading recently,
| and contrast will be washed out to about 50% when exposed to
| sun while page flipping (until next refresh). However, I've
| been thinking this is due to the old age of the device.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I haven't really used them as such, no. Just used them in a
| few electronics projects.
|
| I have to say though that waveshare's displays are of pretty
| low quality. They are designed to be used in electronic price
| tags in stores and as such will never see daylight.
|
| I've used an old Kindle in sunlight and I had no issues, but
| if I'd buy a laptop like this for a significant price I'd
| want to be sure of course.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Yes, this was for our prototype and not the actual chassis. We
| have had conversations about building additional T41 prototypes
| for the pilot program and or selling them. It's something we
| will revisit in the future.
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| Chucking in another hearty "I'm interested!"
|
| I currently use several modern laptops in tandem with an Onyx
| Boox tablet, but would love to offload even more of my use cases
| that make sense to e-ink. Followed the Twitter account, and am
| looking forward to more updates on what this turns out to be!
| Wouldn't mind seeing them here on HN either ;)
| blenderdt wrote:
| An alternative is an E-ink monitor.
|
| Recently Onyx released a 25" version. But it is expensive, around
| $1700
|
| https://onyxboox.com/boox_mirapro
| itwy wrote:
| Do they have good support of the monitor needs repair? Any
| experience?
| robin_reala wrote:
| Dasung do one as well, presumably with the same panel.
|
| One thing I'm wondering is what's the power draw of these
| screens? Ereaders famously sip power, but that's due to the
| race-to-zero environment. If you're running these on a 60fps
| HDMI connection how do they stack up against LCDs?
| john-titor wrote:
| I honestly don't see an added value to such a product. Pushing
| for minimalism can be nice in a lot of situations, but to me,
| this seems like it's going a bit too far: The target audience for
| such a product can't possibly be that large. Visual applications
| aside, even coding without any syntax highlighting does not sound
| too great.
| eequah9L wrote:
| A couple years ago I was toying with the idea of using an e-ink
| display instead of an active one. I wondered about the same
| thing, how is coding without syntax highlighting?
|
| Not too bad it turns out. You still have bold, italic,
| underline and gray. You can do an inverse text, which is good
| for headers (e.g. magit sections). I guess with a GUI editor,
| you can do things like boxes around tokens etc. -- I'm in an
| emacs over ssh most of the time, so I haven't looked into that.
|
| I actually ended up liking this and have been using it since
| then, on a LED display.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| As someone who'd adopted syntax highlighting somewhat
| grudgingly, it's something I do miss significantly whan it's
| gone.
|
| That said, working on an e-ink device and doing _mostly
| lightweight_ scripting occasionally, it 's not a showstopper,
| and greyscale highlighting (which I've not looked into yet)
| could well work out.
|
| I do remember when monochrome ANSI sequences were all I had
| on early serial terminals: regular, bold, underline, and
| reverse video. That's at least four gradations, and with a
| few greyscale shades, the palette should be usefully broad.
| outworlder wrote:
| > greyscale highlighting (which I've not looked into yet)
| could well work out.
|
| It works nicely for books. Can't see why it wouldn't work
| for screens.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Interesting. I cded without syntax highlighting for three
| decades. I think I could go back in an instant as I still
| haven't got comfortable with modern code editors. Visual Studio
| Code (as an example) has so much going on that I often can't
| tell if a word is high-lit because it's in my search field, I
| have selected it, or some other reason.
| [deleted]
| daptaq wrote:
| Perhaps battery-life?
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| When discussing external eink screens the comments were that
| you definitely _do_ get syntax highlighting, just not in color
| but rather bold, italic, different font etc.
|
| That said, I also think that an eink screen (or tablet with
| screen) that you can use with any laptop has a much larger
| audience than having it built in.
| osener wrote:
| I would LOVE to have this for working outdoors on a sunny day.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I would much rather see a comeback of those Transflective LCD
| displays that Pixel Qi made almost 10 years ago.
|
| Here is a demo of the Pixel Qi10 display :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi6DbFyZde8
|
| They had a dual mode so you could have the look/feel of a
| normal backlight LCD panel but when you wanted to go outside
| you could toggle to transflective mode.
|
| This means you would have normal refresh rates, color,
| multimedia, and an actual useful display when outdoors.
|
| Not sure why they ever went bust or what happened to the IP
| for these displays.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| With frontlighting, e-ink is similarly useful indoors or
| out. Alternatively, you could have an LED booklight or
| similar to illuminate the screen.
|
| Refresh rates on e-ink are more than sufficient for text,
| and suffice for getting a general sense of video, though I
| wouldn't call that a high-level experience.
|
| Scrolling and similar are a bit rough, though the general
| solution is to avoid doing that, and instead navigate
| through pagination --- a full page (or portion) at a time.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > e-ink are more than sufficient for text, and suffice
| for getting a general sense of video
|
| Hard disagree but I understand this is personal and that
| perceived experience will vary across the board.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm curious how you find e-ink insufficient / unsuited to
| text specifically.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| You left out the rest of the sentence :) ... E-ink is not
| the medium for getting a sense of a video, also at least
| for wrinting tasks more than reading, smooth scrolling is
| a much needed feature to not get disoriented.
|
| I agree that e-ink is great for _reading_ text which is
| why it is used in e-readers.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| And you'd not indicated what you were disagreeing with.
|
| I'll say again that on the device I have, I _can_ quite
| reasonably get a sense of a video.
|
| Video of BOOX playing video:
| https://yewtu.be.com/watch?v=XRDJv_-wWBI (Videoception!)
| Yes, it's B&W, yes, the framerate is low (about 4--8 fps
| AFAICT), and yes, there's some ghosting. But it's clear
| what the content is. Not appreciably worth from an old
| B&W television in the day --- better resolution for lower
| framerate, perhaps, on e-ink.
|
| If I'm writing text, it's almost always within vim or a
| similar text editor, and my navigation is either paging
| forward or back through the document (full-screen
| repaints), or using search. Again, that is well-suited to
| e-ink.
| vim-guru wrote:
| This!
| chrismorgan wrote:
| A few years ago, I threw out Molokai and made a deliberately-
| minimal and high-contrast colour scheme that I named "bland".
| For the first two weeks, it was strictly black (#000) on white
| (#fff), with keywords bold, comments italic, escape sequences
| in strings bold italic, and things like Rust attributes
| underlined. I was fairly confident I'd want a little colour,
| but I wanted to give strict black-and-white a fair trial period
| before introducing anything further. After this self-imposed
| moratorium I made strings red, comments green and number
| literals blue, and have since made a few tweaks (e.g. italics
| instead of underline for Rust attributes, italics for macro
| invocations, and orange for things like macro variables), and
| made a dark variant somewhere along the way, but this is what I
| use to this day and find to work very well. It's also what I
| use on my website, though generally with a slightly grey
| background rather than white.
|
| Now all this was for monospaced terminal and Vim use. I'd very
| much like to try it with the ability to use a proportional
| typeface, and especially in the context of a monospace
| environment, to _experiment_ with mixing different faces
| (Triplicate + Equity).
|
| Back to the monochrome thing: I'd like to be able to use grey
| in most or all of the places where I currently use colour,
| simply to distinguish them more clearly; it'd be a lighter grey
| than the luminosity channel of the corresponding colours. Give
| me that, and monochrome is quite sufficient. But really, even
| black-and-white was tolerable, though it'd lend significant
| difficulty for some features line diff highlighting. Certainly
| full colour is nowhere near as necessary as most imagine
| (commonly often never having experienced anything else).
| dmos62 wrote:
| > syntax highlighting [on a monochrome eink]
|
| I'm not sure how many tones this eink screen has, but there
| certainly is a variety of monochrome editor themes. You could
| make your own if not.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The Onyx BOOX Max Lumi features 16 greyscale shades, with
| more available via dithering and/or halftoning, which is
| mostly tolerable on text, given 220 dpi resolution.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| I do a lot of writing, but I find that the idea of a distraction
| free environment doesn't work for me because I need to refer to
| external material too often. It doesn't matter whether it is for
| reviewing engineering projects, writing sermons or eulogies for
| funerals, or doing academic work (I have a bit of an odd
| lifestyle), I always need to use more than the editor or word-
| processor. I could see how it might work for a poet, but I'm not
| that.
|
| If you are one of the people for whom a low-distraction
| environment works, could you say what sort of stuff you are
| writing?
| paulcole wrote:
| > If you are one of the people for whom a low-distraction
| environment works, could you say what sort of stuff you are
| writing
|
| When I was studying American Lit in college, my laptop died and
| I replaced it with an AlphaSmart Dana (this would've been
| around 2004). It was like a palm pilot with a long narrow
| screen and nearly full-size QWERTY keyboard.
|
| I used it for about 2 years and just synced files w/ my
| roommate's computer to print. Most of my reference was to
| external material as well, but in the form of printed books. It
| was also a great note-taking device in class.
| nathias wrote:
| Philosophy, but I divide the work of research and writing into
| separate activities. This isn't great from a
| productivity/quantitative aspect, but it's much better for
| quality.
| nine_k wrote:
| So, you can honestly say: "Now I've found enough, and
| whatever questions I may have during the writing I can answer
| with what I've found"?
|
| That's a... superpower.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I rarely (twice a month? I don't remember the last time)
| search something online when I'm working on something at
| work (personal projects are the total opposite). We try to
| limit dependencies because they are security risks and work
| is basically implementing slightly different services doing
| more or less the same things with a slightly different
| architecture.
|
| I'd love to have less eye strain for the worthless time I'm
| spending in front of a computer in order to make money. I'm
| worried the refresh rate speed won't be pleasant enough
| though: typing on my kindle is a pain.
|
| On top of that, a huge portion of my paid time is spent in
| equally worthless video meetings so I would need some other
| device, regardless.
| travisporter wrote:
| I had a related shower thought - is a math phd thesis is
| just a slow bandwidth transfer out of the brain
| nathias wrote:
| Yes, it helps if you are an expert in the field and have a
| broad overview and are working on things that aren't
| popular.
| tintedfireglass wrote:
| The website is down :( No one can escape the HN Hug Of Death lol
| HidyBush wrote:
| Why would I need an underpowered laptop with a laggy e-ink screen
| and probably a bottom of the barrel keyboard?
|
| First of all it's a terrible reading experience. Why would I want
| to lug around a whole laptop to read some books? My 10.1" e-ink
| tablet is already perfect. And if not books, what else would I
| read, documents? documentation? as per what reason? to _program_
| on that device? so it would need to have a complete desktop OS to
| deploy everything that I need? on such limited hardware?
|
| Secondly it's a terrible writing experience. Not in a million
| years that keyboard is going to be better than a model M or even
| a decent mechanical keyboard. Also, again, write what? A book or
| a scientific paper? ok sure, if you are so dedicated that you are
| willing to buy a device only for that to bring with you on your
| travels then please go ahead. Also writing code would be
| impossible because as I've mentioned you would basically need
| your whole stack.
|
| Lastly it seems to really not solve the problem it claims to
| solve. What's the purpose of this device, to have less
| distractions? Ok, then why couldn't I just write my stuff on a
| notebook or with a typewriter? If you want purpose and
| intentionality those are really the ways to do it, not mash your
| keyboard infinitely at a e-ink laptop. Same goes for reading, if
| the aim is to make reading slower and more comfortable then just
| read a good old book. Nothing slower and more distraction-free
| than being able only to bring one with you at a time because of
| the size.
|
| Please then, could anybody tell me what they find interesting
| about this product? Because I really don't get it
| capableweb wrote:
| Here you have some answers to who'd use a laptop like this:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31394866
|
| > A separated device to write my blog or some short stories
| would be a godsend to me.
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31395049
|
| > I'd love to use this for programming, or writing.
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31394890
|
| > I would buy this indeed. I like working outside and it's not
| very good at the moment.
| HidyBush wrote:
| I already wrote in my comment that at most I can see very
| motivated writers wanting this device, so your first link is
| not an answer.
|
| I already wrote in my comment that programming would be
| impossible unless you literally mean just _writing_ code
| without actually compiling it and running it and testing it.
| If you have a stack to take care of, unless you are working
| with some mind-boggling lightweight stuff, this underpowered
| hardware would not work, so your second link is not an
| answer.
|
| Third link is about some genering _work_ that could be done
| which doesn 't really tell me anything, so it's not an
| answer.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I used to hack on blender with a mind-boggling underpowered
| chromebook running fedora. And on a slightly less-boggling
| desktop box. Then they upped the minimum OpenGL version so
| I was left behind.
|
| Also would compile pretty much anything I felt like playing
| around with where the only real limitation was
| memory...well, and time.
|
| The world would probably be a better place if these "full
| stack" devs were forced to use underwhelming hardware so
| you don't end up with 200mb downloads to view a simple
| webpage. Just my opinion.
| widdershins wrote:
| There's one reason alone that I'd be interested, but it's a
| pretty big one: to work outside in the sunshine without a
| washed-out screen. For this purpose all I'd need is Emacs to
| run, and I'd be golden.
|
| Being able to work outside would be fantastic for my well-
| being, and I'd accept quite a lot of compromise to get that.
| cassepipe wrote:
| This product ? I don't know,it's still vaporware so far. But
| e-paper is very comfortable on the eyes, is readable in
| sunlight and requires low power.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The person you're replying to suggested they already have a
| 10.1" e-ink tablet that meets the criteria.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Oh and it must have a keyboard and run Linux.
| Lio wrote:
| I'm unclear, how you feel about this project. :P
|
| Joking aside, I still think this could be an interesting
| product for a certain small niche of writes that want an easy
| to read, and to work slowly with a keyboard based experience.
|
| The sort of person that would write using either WordStar or
| Vi. The sort of person that might still use a typewriter. very
| niche.
|
| You mention keyboards but that's te thing about them,
| preference is very subjective.
|
| My self I have an original Made in Scotland Model M and a
| Cherry Brown Pok3r sitting on a shelf, gather dust.
|
| They're not for me and I don't enjoy using them.
|
| It turns out I find typing on short travel laptop keyboards
| much more comfortable. I do almost everything via the keyboard
| so it one of the most important aspects of any computer for me
| and I choose something different from you.
|
| Different users, different use-cases, different products.
|
| ps I love eInk but this is not probably not for me either but
| I'm not discounting that it is for someone.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I never understand the argument for less distractions, it is as
| if one cannot manage to focus themselves, and needs an external
| entity to behave properly.
|
| Don't want to be distracted by XYZ? Turn it off.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| That manifestly doesn't work very well
| pjmlp wrote:
| If people need someone else to focus themselves, yes it
| isn't working very well.
| soapdog wrote:
| This sounds just like the "Don't be poor" solution for
| economic problems that has been floating around.
|
| Your devices are made to extract attention from you these
| days. The companies that makes them and the online services
| most of us use derive their money from the time we spend
| using their services (so they can profile us or upsell us).
| It is all designed to interrupt you and draw your attention
| in.
|
| As a writer, let me say that it is increasingly hard to be
| focused for extended periods of time while writing if I don't
| switch to a either a distraction-free device or switch all
| the stuff off like you said. These distraction-free devices
| reduce friction in being focused, not only they don't provide
| distractions but since they are built around the notion of
| focus, just picking one up puts you on a more focused
| mindset. Much like putting on some apron puts some people
| (mostly me) into a cooking mindset. I'm totally able to cook
| without my apron, but wearing it is part of the ritual. These
| devices are a tool and also a prop to help us focus.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Still looks like nany state, kind of thing to me.
| soapdog wrote:
| Be careful of thinking that your own personal experience
| of something can be extrapolated to other people. Each of
| us experience distraction and lack of focus differently.
| What may not be an issue for you, might be a big thing to
| others.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Your dismissive tone is almost comical.
|
| I'd personally love to have an e-ink laptop. Currently it's
| unthinkable for me to be in a beautiful spot in the sunshine
| while doing some light coding or writing. Seems like this
| product would make it viable to some extent. I wouldn't expect
| it to become a daily driver though.
|
| If it were convertible (folding) it would be even better.
| soapdog wrote:
| As someone who switches between a Freewrite Traveller and an
| iPad with external keyboard for my creative writing workflows,
| let me be the first to say that there is an audience for that.
|
| e-ink is for reading and writing, an underpowered laptop will
| work just fine for that. Heck, AlphaSmart Danas are doing fine
| for that and they have Dragonball CPUs at 33mhz.
|
| Do not discount how pleasant it is to split the screen into two
| regions, have an eBook on one and and editor in the other so
| that you can write and research at the same time. I've used a
| 10'' Surface Go for a long time, it was a wonderful little
| machine. Being underpowered made me proactively conscious of
| what I was doing with it, which led to more focused work.
| Still, starting at the LCD for extended periods of time was not
| fun. I'd love to replicate that kind of setup with this new
| laptop.
|
| The cult of model M has some truth in it. Yes it is a wonderful
| keyboard, but guess what, there are other good keyboards out
| there. They might not be Model Ms or unikey (or whatever the
| new makers of Model M are), but that doesn't mean they are
| crap.
|
| You seem to be a developer since your comment is very focused
| on using this for development, which in my opinion is not where
| it would shine the most. Still, you could totally use an
| underpowered e-ink laptop as a development machine if you have
| an internet connection and leverage cloud services for a ton of
| stuff. A lot of developers are just pushing stuff to CI/CD
| pipelines anyway.
|
| You're clearly not in the audience for this, but if you just do
| a bit of research around how much creative writers love their
| Freewrites, AlphaSmarts (no e-ink unfortunately), Pomeras, and
| other distraction free devices, you'd see that maybe some
| people would find this very appealing.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Honestly, your tone is horrible. You seem to be venting and I'd
| suggest you think about why, for your own sake.
| skrebbel wrote:
| You could've asked these questions without being so dismissive.
| This is clearly (currently) a single person's passion project,
| you don't need to come at them so hard.
| samjmck wrote:
| It's a cool open-hardware and open-source project. What are you
| so worked up about?
| HidyBush wrote:
| >It's a cool open-hardware and open-source project.
|
| this is very disingenuous. it's a _product_ being developed
| by a _company_. this isn 't some github repo with a few
| images of an open source e-ink reader made by some hacker
| guy, this is a proper thing that is being designed, developed
| and maybe pushed to the market.
|
| and to me, if you're a company developing a product you
| should at least make sure its basic existence is justified.
| nobody has yet told me why this product has any real use.
| broodbucket wrote:
| Isn't that for the market to decide? It's not like they're
| using public funds for R&D, if people want it they'll pay
| for it and if they don't they won't.
| HidyBush wrote:
| >Isn't that for the market to decide?
|
| I couldn't care less about the market. I am _personally_
| not in the slightest convinced by this product and I
| specifically asked other people to please tell me why
| they would want it. I just really dislike bullshit
| products (not projects) that lead nowhere and brain drain
| the open source world.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Personally I'd probably be a lot more productive without
| the YouTubes sucking me in whenever I have time to do
| stuff other than my job.
|
| I read pdfs on my laptop, code using gedit without any
| fancy plugins for code highlighting or whatever and drop
| to the terminal if I need to mess with stuff. Hell, the
| majority of the time surfing the interwebs is in reader
| view on my iPhone, like a good 90% of the time.
|
| Plus, you are in no way entitled to the brain power of
| anyone who you are not directly compensating for their
| labor.
| samjmck wrote:
| > nobody has yet told me why this product has any real use.
|
| Maybe nobody owes you an answer?
| [deleted]
| e-_pusher wrote:
| For my distraction-free writing, the solution I found was to buy
| a 1992 grayscale LCD 386 laptop. I can do writing in Word that I
| have installed on Windows 3.1 and then open them later on my
| modern day computer with a floppy disk drive. This setup works
| great and I can help answer questions if anyone is curious.
|
| I was going to write a blog post about this but I ended up
| sitting on the draft for too long and forgot about it, I really
| should publish that post :)
| 0des wrote:
| Are you always connected to power? I kept a few old laptops
| that would be practically useless today, but always wanted to
| resurrect for simple offline things. The biggest issue I have
| is power when off the charger.
|
| I think my best laptop is 45 minutes or so per charge. At one
| point I even bought extra batteries and kept them safely stored
| and dry, only to realize that this does almost nothing to
| preserve their longevity as now years later I find them all to
| have about the same lifespan. I have extra 18650 batteries,
| however Im not sure, given the size of these, that this is what
| they use in there.
| e-_pusher wrote:
| Yes the battery is long dead, so I always run it off of wall
| power. I have though about making a 3D printed modern day
| battery that is shaped like a NiMh battery of old, but has
| LiIon batteries inside, gets charged off of USBC, and
| provides voltage at the same level that the original NiMh
| would provide. Should be doable, but never got around to it.
| 0des wrote:
| That seems pretty complicated, I like it.
| t_mann wrote:
| I'm very happy with my e-Ink tablet, so this sounds like a very
| interesting project. The main benefit is that it just feels less
| distractive and addictive. But it's a far more limited UX than
| LCD/OLED screens, we have to admit that. I can see the laptop
| form factor being useful for tasks that mainly requires
| reading/writing text and doesn't depend on fast refresh rates or
| lots of mouse interactions, eg authors, perhaps some types of
| research and programming too.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Which e-Ink tablet do you have?
| IanCal wrote:
| Different person, but I have a supernote a5x and really love
| it for writing. It's replaced my "piles of bits of paper"
| approach. There's a nice way of organising things but I am
| not strict enough on that.
| t_mann wrote:
| Onyx Boox Note or sth like that, can't remember the exact
| model name.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Would be cool if somebody made an E-Ink 2-in-1, like the
| surface pro
| robin_reala wrote:
| I assume you're not talking about something like the Lenovo
| Yoga Book C930? https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/yog
| a-2-in-1-series...
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Wow that's neat. But I was thinking more along the lines of
| a E-Ink tablet with a kickstand and detachable keyboard
| yeellow wrote:
| Why not an Android based e-reader with a simple stand and a
| Bluetooth keyboard? Lighter, better for reading and enough if
| what you want is simple writing. And most probably cheaper. You
| can even have one with a stylus for handwriting.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| You are correct; an Android-based e-reader with a simple stand
| Bluetooth keyboard could work. I have used a Remarkable and
| Dasung Not-ereader for this purpose.
|
| I believe creating an e-ink device is, in many ways, a new
| category of devices that requires changes to the hardware,
| software, and many other areas to create a cohesive experience
| for people.
|
| In the long term, I see it as a process of creating an
| ecosystem of e-ink devices that is open-hardware and open-
| source.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Looks interesting, especially the frankenstein model in the
| ThinkPad T41 chassis as that has a lovely keyboard and display
| aspect ratio.
|
| However I think the biggest problem to tackle here is not the
| hardware but the software. If it runs for example some kind of
| regular Linux distribution or Android it won't be very usable as
| they're just not designed for e-ink. If on the other hand it runs
| something custom, it would need to be able to sync documents to
| the exact syncing setup that I currently use for me to consider
| buying it (and of course also the exact syncing setup of any
| other potential buyer, of which there are probably close to
| infinite, especially in the kind of circles that this device
| appeals to in the first place).
| maven29 wrote:
| KOReader is built for kobo e-ink readers but will run on
| Android and Linux distributions. It supports syncing to Calibre
| which you could self-host and access over tailscale.
|
| As for webapps, you have einkbro on android, which you could
| run on linux with Waydroid.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > If it runs for example some kind of regular Linux
| distribution or Android it won't be very usable as they're just
| not designed for e-ink.
|
| You've got to start from somewhere. Once you have hardware that
| can run regular Linux well enough, adapting the UX to e-paper
| screens ought to be comparatively easy. This is exactly how we
| got mobile-friendly Linux distributions after all.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Thank you! There are challenges at every step in the process.
| Some of these challenges are discussed in this blog post:
|
| https://alexsoto.dev/challenges-building-an-open-source-eink...
|
| Since that blog post, we are exploring developing Wayland
| protocols that will offer native e-ink support to client
| applications.
| youhavetosayit wrote:
| This is my dream, please. Make the refresh rate slightly too slow
| for videos, I'm buying 5, thanks <3
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ironically, the end product will likely be unable to render
| that webpage they made to pitch the idea properly.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| Looks too thick. Needs to be light and ultra-portable. Passive
| cooling if possible.
| waterlaw wrote:
| Agreed. Bought a chromebook and made a distro that boots into
| neovim for this reason.
|
| It's fanless. Cost $45. Makes almost no heat after tweaking.
| Has a 12 hour battery life under use. Basically functions as an
| electronic (abeit more advanced) typewriter.
|
| Since the screen is 11 inches. I usually prop the Kindle on one
| side of it and use nvim in vsplit mode. Half the screen becomes
| e-ink. Can read and take notes at the same time.
| blindluke wrote:
| I'd love to hear more details about your setup, if you're
| willing to share. Especially the part about using the Kindle
| as a secondary screen.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Hi,
|
| Thank you for the feedback; we are working on creating the
| laptop chassis and are taking this into consideration.
| [deleted]
| frou_dh wrote:
| Using a typical desktop operating system, but on an eInk screen,
| is one of those things that sounds cool, but I suspect the
| reality after using it for a while will be _" Never mind, this
| sucks, because no software (including the OS itself) was designed
| with working well on sluggish & image-persistence-afflicted
| panels in mind"_.
|
| I think doing this concept properly is as much of a software
| project as a hardware project.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I use normal Android apps on my R-Reader. With some contrast
| settings and animations (mostly) turned off it's quite nice.
| However the animations that are still around (loading spinner,
| animated GIF) can be quite annoying.
|
| A mouse pointer may itself be a bit hard to display on an E-Ink
| Screen. It will definitely leave a trail behind.
| dbtc wrote:
| The terminal was made for e-ink displays ;)
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Except when scrolling, gods forbid you scroll on an eink
| screen.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| If you work mainly in terminals it will be OK I think.
| Something like i3 and off you go.
| Vekz wrote:
| All you need is Emacs and you got a whole operating system
| designed for reading and editing text in a limited environment.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Unix was originally designed to work on teletypes, which are
| even slower and higher-latency than e-ink.
|
| Having used an e-ink device heavily for over a year, including
| both local (Termux) and remote (SSH) system use via it and a
| keyboard, I'm conveninced that for text-heavy work it's fully
| functional, and would probably be viable with a sufficiently-
| thoughtful GUI which adhered to the design principles and
| respected the imitations of e-ink:
|
| 1. Persistence is free.
|
| 2. Pixels are cheap
|
| 3. Paints are expensive
|
| 4. Refreshes are slow
|
| 5. Colour is limited to nonexistent.
|
| 6. Pagination over scroll.
|
| 7. Full refresh (of page or portion) over pan.
|
| 8. Reflective rather than emissive.
|
| 9. Minimise animation.
|
| 10. Line-art or halftones over shade gradients (images).
| outworlder wrote:
| That's essentially older GUI desktops before GPUs did more
| than just provide an interface for the monitor. Paints used
| to be very expensive (and remained so for quite a while).
| Pixel scrolling also took a while to appear on consumer
| desktops.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Well, that's certainly true for the majority of _modern_
| software, but the operating systems of yore and the software
| that ran on them was designed to handle old slow LCDs and
| restricted color environments quite well.
|
| Mac OS up through System 7.5.5 works excellently on such
| displays, because it had to run on several models of PowerBook
| with black and white or grayscale passive matrix displays,
| which were notoriously slow. While not as good, black and white
| support remains decent all the way through the end of Classic
| Mac OS, with version 9.2.1.
|
| For this reason, when imagining an e-ink semi-unitasker laptop
| such as this I imagine it being built with extremely low power
| hardware and running old operating systems, such as the
| aforementioned Classic Mac OS. I'm sure DOS/Win3.1/WinNT could
| stand in here too, probably more easily since 486/586/Pentium-
| compatible x86 CPUs are still being manufactured. One wouldn't
| be able to run Google Docs on such a machine, but there's a
| veritable cornucopia of abandonware readily available for such
| platforms at places like Macintosh Garden[0], and given highly
| specific use case of such a machine I think most people could
| find something that suits their needs.
|
| [0]: https://macintoshgarden.org
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I used and repaired those in the 1990s. System 7 was usable
| on those, to be sure, but I don't remember anything about it
| as "excellent". Everyone thought they kind of sucked. You
| could see the ghosting even then, and by the end of 1992 or
| 1993, IIRC, Apple stopped shipping passive matrix displays.
|
| e-ink displays are not even up to that standard of
| responsiveness yet. And, as you point out, modern software
| has higher expectations than the systems that kind of sucked
| on those old passive matrix LCDs.
| PMunch wrote:
| I have some insight in this as I'm currently building a very
| similar project myself. I'm using off-the-shelf components and
| the relatively cheap USB driver board for the 10.3" ePaper
| display is more than capable enough of showing a variety of
| content. Typing in a document or code is plenty fast, scrolling
| a webpage is usable, but you'd probably want to use
| PgUp/PgDown, moving the mouse around is fine but I'm using a
| tiling window manager to avoid having to drag windows around.
| I'm able to drive video, but it's quite choppy. In general
| small updates are plenty fast (like showing characters next to
| a cursor) and big updates are slow (like full screen video
| playback). Playing video in a small window is fine if you just
| want to get some information out of it.
|
| All these speeds are in a dithered 1-bit mode though. As soon
| as you start playing around with grayscale things starts going
| slow (you essentially need to display N levels of grayscale as
| N frames). The system I'm using is capable of updating parts of
| the display in 1-bit mode and others in "high-fidelity" 16
| levels mode. This means that I could e.g. tell it that my
| picture viewing program should use the full quality mode, and
| my text editor should use the fast mode. Since I'm using a
| tiling window manager opening a picture would then use about a
| second to display the image, but once it's there I could type
| into a window next to it at full speed. It could also allow me
| to highlight areas to redraw in high-quality mode if I was
| browsing a website for example and wanted to watch a particular
| image.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Greyscale might be nice for syntax highlighting.
|
| I wonder, is there any practical way to do 1-bit _just_
| around the cursor?
| pmlnr wrote:
| I beg you: make it with the old ThinkPad keyboard, including the
| trackpoint with 3 physical buttons.
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| As an owner of multiple Thinkpads and a fan of the classic IBM
| keyboards, I hear you loud and clear.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| What is the highest PPI, pocket-sized, e-ink display?
|
| I'm imagining a 3.5" handheld device for kids, that can't be
| broken. Very low power. Could show comics or other graphics, but
| usually just text.
|
| The maximum information density would be to fill that "cheat
| sheet" with Traditional Chinese characters, written top to
| bottom, left to right. And that depends on the PPI.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Can-literate-Chinese-people-easily-rea...
| robin_reala wrote:
| I'm living proof that it's possible to break e-ink displays
| without any real effort.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Are they stronger than LCDs?
| robin_reala wrote:
| I've broken more e-ink displays (2) than LCDs (0?), but it
| could be because they ereaders tend to be left in
| unexpected places. But either way, they're not tricky to
| crush, and the failure mode is much the same as LCDs.
| AlanYx wrote:
| E-ink panels come in two types, one with a flexible
| backplane and one with a rigid blackplane. The former are
| durable and resistant to blunt blows; the latter are not.
| The ones with a flexible backplane don't necessarily
| require a rigid polycarbonate covering layer; there are
| commercial devices like the Fujitsu Quaderno that just use
| them raw. But if you were targeting young children who
| might take sharp objects to the screen, you'd want to use a
| covering layer.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| I think a flexible backplane is good for wearable
| electronics, and a rigid covering layer (polycarbonate or
| glass) is better for typing on a keyboard.
| Gentil wrote:
| While I don't think this is comparable to the ordinary laptops, I
| am still glad this is present. Mainly because the tech is
| evolving and I can't wait for e-inks to have colorful displays
| with 1ms response time! This is one of the many pre-steps towards
| it.
| rkangel wrote:
| Previous discussion (4 months ago):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29929446
| nathias wrote:
| I use the Pomera DM100, the only thing that bothers me is the
| keyboard ...
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| Great, I use a Pomera DM30, and it's a lovely portable device,
| although it takes some to adjust to the keyboard.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Hope it works out and it'll pay those utility bills ^^.
| steveylang wrote:
| This reminds me of the Pixel Qi screens that promised cheaper
| notebooks with really long battery life (and was used in the
| OLPC.) Today's backlit e-ink screens do seem more promising,
| although the versatility of a computer using a slow refresh
| screen really hurts it.
|
| For the right price it could be useful and find its niche.
| rbanffy wrote:
| With an ePaper display that size this machine will be extremely
| expensive. The main factor providing the distraction free
| environment could be the Armlogic processor making it
| uncomfortable to browse the web (although 4 A73 cores isn't bad
| at all).
| dmos62 wrote:
| I'd love to use this for programming, or writing. It being both
| eink and x86 is pretty unique.
|
| Though there are alternatives I'm looking at, like an android
| eink tablet with a bluetooth keyboard, which has the advantage of
| portability.
|
| I'd mostly work through Mosh either way, so the x86 vs arm
| doesn't matter that much.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Does high-refresh-rate (e.g. capable-of-scrolling) e-ink exist
| yet?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Depends how you define high refresh rate. By regular e-paper
| standards the tech it has come quite far but still below the
| 60Hz you get in any cheapo LCD tech.
|
| Also, the faster you refresh a e-paper display, the power
| consumption can even surpass power efficient LCD tech so it's
| just not viable in that case unless the panel has the
| capability of partial refresh but even then it's not ideal for
| consuming fast moving content.
|
| E-paper displays are power efficient for static images (books,
| price tags, advertising, notifications, etc) but if you have to
| refresh them fully several times a second, the power
| consumption goes through the roof (moving the e-ink particles
| around in their pixel compartments requires more effort than
| rotating LCD crystals/OLED).
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| One of the areas we are exploring is developing Wayland
| protocols that will offer native e-ink support to client
| applications.
|
| We hope this may partially address the power
| consumption/efficiency of static/dynamic content related to
| e-paper displays.
| danjessen wrote:
| Isn't that kinda counter intuitive compared to what e-ink was
| originally made for?
| bluescrn wrote:
| If you want to make an e-ink laptop (with more functionality
| than a Kindle), you're going to need to handle scrolling,
| cursors, or motion of some kind
| alex-a-soto wrote:
| On the software side of things, we hope to work with a
| consultancy to develop Wayland protocols that will offer
| native e-ink support to client applications.
| wakeupcall wrote:
| _For_? It 's more like "what can we do with _this_ tech? "
| [deleted]
| vicda wrote:
| I bought an eink monitor. Overall great except I had to switch
| to light mode for everything since ghosting was an issue. It
| had a high enough refresh rate to be workable.
|
| (there were warnings though that using the higher refresh rate
| settings would greatly affect longevity of the screen though.)
|
| 7/10 would not recommend.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| > 7/10 would not recommend
|
| Why no recommendation? Seemed like a positive overall
| experience.
| vicda wrote:
| I greatly prefer dark mode for my normal monitors. I
| greatly prefer light mode for the eink monitor. My multi-
| monitor setup went exactly as well as you might imagine.
|
| Also the eink monitor I bought for $1k is quite small by
| today's standards, so I couldn't utilize as effectively as
| a vertical monitor which keeps more continuous text visible
| at a time.
|
| The tech on its own? 7/10. I love it and it only lost
| points because the driver documentation and accompanying
| tool interface wasn't fully translated from the original
| Chinese. Ghosting issues and a relatively slow refresh rate
| were known tradeoffs at purchase time. so can't fault it
| for that.
| sprash wrote:
| There was "mirasol" which was full color high refresh rate
| passive display technology.
|
| It is unclear to this day why it never made it to market
| considering that E-Ink is a far inferior product.
| Wildgoose wrote:
| I would love a mirasol screen on a laptop or tablet and
| actually be able to view/read a screen in bright sunlight. I
| really hope that either Amazon decide to resurrect the
| technology for their Kindle e-readers, or that smartwatch
| manufacturers adopt it en masse.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Had to read up on this, because it's very interesting.
|
| The short of it seems to be that production runs of Mirasol
| panels had very high fault rates, which lead to delays and
| losses. Qualcomm ultimately decided to abandon it and to
| fully focus on the Snapdragon processors which were perfectly
| aligned with the booming IoT space at the time.
|
| Mirasol was apparently very promising and ahead of its time,
| albeit immature. It was based on electro-mechanical mirror
| pixels rather than dye. The biggest technical downside seemed
| to have been that the colors were pretty washed out and
| bland.
|
| EDIT: It actually _did_ make it to market. There was even a
| smartwatch powered by Mirasol (the Toq). It was never
| implemented by the big e-Reader brands though.
| Wildgoose wrote:
| I don't think these colours look washed out. They look
| sharp and bright to me, (mirasol on the right, colour e-ink
| on the left).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUGRlsKzai4
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| I just summarized what I read elsewhere. I have never
| seen one in real life.
|
| It does look good in the comparison you linked. It is
| being backlit though, while the E-ink is not. Maybe the
| mentioned blandness is more of a problem when used fully
| passively.
|
| It seemed to have been a good competitor regardless, and
| it's sad that it got mothballed.
| sj4nz wrote:
| Usable in direct sunlight?
|
| When will this product ship?
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