4 ms·

I'm out of date. Does E-ink still have ~500ms latency of refreshing the screen? If so, that's the #1 reason I believed it wouldn't be successful when I used the

I'm out of date. Does E-ink still have ~500ms latency of refreshing the screen? If so, that's the #1 reason I believed it wouldn't be successful when I used them 6 years ago.

theshrike79 9y ago
But they're still amazing for status displays, e-readers and stuff that don't need low latencies. What's keeping them from being more popular is the price, anything over a 1" e-ink display costs a literal arm and a leg.
- vortico 9y ago
  I would argue that e-readers actually do need reasonably low latencies. The reason I still read books is because I can flip through pages quickly and glance over 20 pages a second as I look for the page with a certain pattern of text or an image.
  - tajen 9y ago
    but you don’t need that for signage, calendar on your door, paper decorations on your bedroom walls, meeting room reservation sheets...
    - vortico 9y ago
      Are those use cases significant enough to make e-ink "take the world by storm"?
  - theshrike79 9y ago
    IMO eInk readers are only good for "linear fiction", books that are read from start to finish. Anything that needs to be browsed or flipped through, nope. Very few electronic versions are usable in this case, be they normal LCD screens or eInk.
- j_s 9y ago
  Not sure how specific you're trying to be - here's a specific example of 4.2" at $35. I actually would be interested to see a graph of cost-per-square-inch to see where the arms and legs actually do come into play. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400x300-4-2inch-E-Ink-display-module-SPI-Without-backlight-Compatible-with-variuous-board-Ultra-low/32827172081.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400x300-4-2inch-E-Ink-displa... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721766
IshKebab 9y ago
They're a lot faster than they used to be. Maybe 200ms? Still not as fast as video. And I don't know why everyone seems to think they aren't successful. Amazon sells a ton of Kindles. They're very successful.
olavgg 9y ago
There is a Norwegian startup that has decreased the latency dramatically. https://remarkable.com/ https://remarkable.com/ https://youtu.be/zpUPpiV7gAo https://youtu.be/zpUPpiV7gAo
- Terretta 9y ago
  I have one. Really is remarkable. No meaningful latency while writing unless you draw fast large figures while watching for lag. Upsides: Feels like pencil on paper. With iPad Pro I keep going back to paper. With this... it’s paper. Downsides: Mobile software clunky, doesn’t connect to all WiFi, hardware paging buttons should not have been on bottom.
  - luck_fenovo 9y ago
    I have one too. The drawing/writing is pretty great, though once it's transferred back to a PC, the resolution seems kind of poor. Not too bad, but I'd like it to be smoother. The only other major issue is software stability especially when reading. I've had it hardlock while reading something, then have to wait for the battery to drain because it won't respond to any input, then once I have it back up it forgot where I left off so I lost progress. So for the time being it sits, though once a software update or 2 come out I'll try again.
  - agentultra 9y ago
    I have one too. I love it. I was blown away when I was able to write some technical specifications in emacs, render them to PDF and share them to the device, then go for a coffee and review my work. I can markup my documents, sync them back to my machine, etc. I do wish the resolutions of the documents on my desktop were better. I've drafted presentations on the device while thinking. I vastly prefer paper for thinking. This device is perfect for that. I just wish I could do more with it. I want to be able to hook up a cloud service to interpret my math hand-writing, run it on my theorem prover or checker, and return the results, etc.... much like what people were doing in Xerox Parc ages ago. There's so much potential here.
  - drcongo 9y ago

I'm out of date. Does E-ink still have ~500ms latency of refreshing the screen? If so, that's the #1 reason I believed it wouldn't be successful when I used them 6 years ago.

theshrike79 9y ago

But they're still amazing for status displays, e-readers and stuff that don't need low latencies. What's keeping them from being more popular is the price, anything over a 1" e-ink display costs a literal arm and a leg.

vortico 9y ago
I would argue that e-readers actually do need reasonably low latencies. The reason I still read books is because I can flip through pages quickly and glance over 20 pages a second as I look for the page with a certain pattern of text or an image.
- tajen 9y ago
  but you don’t need that for signage, calendar on your door, paper decorations on your bedroom walls, meeting room reservation sheets...
  - vortico 9y ago
    Are those use cases significant enough to make e-ink "take the world by storm"?
- theshrike79 9y ago
  IMO eInk readers are only good for "linear fiction", books that are read from start to finish. Anything that needs to be browsed or flipped through, nope. Very few electronic versions are usable in this case, be they normal LCD screens or eInk.
j_s 9y ago
Not sure how specific you're trying to be - here's a specific example of 4.2" at $35. I actually would be interested to see a graph of cost-per-square-inch to see where the arms and legs actually do come into play. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400x300-4-2inch-E-Ink-display-module-SPI-Without-backlight-Compatible-with-variuous-board-Ultra-low/32827172081.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/400x300-4-2inch-E-Ink-displa... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15721766

IshKebab 9y ago

They're a lot faster than they used to be. Maybe 200ms? Still not as fast as video. And I don't know why everyone seems to think they aren't successful. Amazon sells a ton of Kindles. They're very successful.

olavgg 9y ago

There is a Norwegian startup that has decreased the latency dramatically. https://remarkable.com/ https://remarkable.com/ https://youtu.be/zpUPpiV7gAo https://youtu.be/zpUPpiV7gAo

Terretta 9y ago
I have one. Really is remarkable. No meaningful latency while writing unless you draw fast large figures while watching for lag. Upsides: Feels like pencil on paper. With iPad Pro I keep going back to paper. With this... it’s paper. Downsides: Mobile software clunky, doesn’t connect to all WiFi, hardware paging buttons should not have been on bottom.
- luck_fenovo 9y ago
  I have one too. The drawing/writing is pretty great, though once it's transferred back to a PC, the resolution seems kind of poor. Not too bad, but I'd like it to be smoother. The only other major issue is software stability especially when reading. I've had it hardlock while reading something, then have to wait for the battery to drain because it won't respond to any input, then once I have it back up it forgot where I left off so I lost progress. So for the time being it sits, though once a software update or 2 come out I'll try again.
- agentultra 9y ago
  I have one too. I love it. I was blown away when I was able to write some technical specifications in emacs, render them to PDF and share them to the device, then go for a coffee and review my work. I can markup my documents, sync them back to my machine, etc. I do wish the resolutions of the documents on my desktop were better. I've drafted presentations on the device while thinking. I vastly prefer paper for thinking. This device is perfect for that. I just wish I could do more with it. I want to be able to hook up a cloud service to interpret my math hand-writing, run it on my theorem prover or checker, and return the results, etc.... much like what people were doing in Xerox Parc ages ago. There's so much potential here.
- drcongo 9y ago