12 ms·

SunBook – Sunlight Readable Netbook (2014)

68 points by spaniard89277 5y ago

luke2m 5y ago
I wish someone made netbooks again.
- vnxli 5y ago
  Same. With a full OS. Chromebooks don’t cut it for me
  - maccard 5y ago
    They're not 300 bucks, buy a surface go or a MacBook air ticks all the boxes of what I want in a netbook!
- dTal 5y ago
  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.
  - iagovar 5y ago
    What do you do with such PC? I mean, I'm pretty sure it's very difficult to code, use excel, and the like.
    - gumby 5y ago
      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.
    - dTal 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        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 5y ago
      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.
  - aasasd 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
      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.
- GoToRO 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  Pinebook pro is serving me fairly well in this area. Chromebook like specs but normal desktop Linux.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    A bit short on memory and hardware support is still a gamble.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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.
- cstross 5y ago
  A number of Chinese companies have colonized that form factor: GPD: https://www.gpd.hk/product https://www.gpd.hk/product One Netbook: https://1netbook.com/ 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/ 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.
- rektide 5y ago
  tablets and Bluetooth keyboard have filled the role well for me.
iagovar 5y ago
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-built-e-ink-laptop-project/118 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 5y ago
  I had one of those display panels on a rugged Win7 tablet and it was pretty impressive.
  - iagovar 5y ago
    Would you say it could be possible to code with such display if it was attached to a laptop?
    - wzdd 5y ago
      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.
the-dude 5y ago
Uhhh, wasn't the OLPC the first? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
- gumby 5y ago
  Yes. The PixelQi screen in this laptop was developed for the olpc.
tempodox 5y ago
> IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.
- robinsoh 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      > 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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
1996 5y ago
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/ https://little-beans.net/review/yogabook-c930/ Linux driver is WIP on https://github.com/aleksb/yogabook-c930-linux-eink-driver https://github.com/aleksb/yogabook-c930-linux-eink-driver
- totetsu 5y ago
  I think there's one of these in the local bookoff..
  - 1996 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        Check my link for github, IIRC I think it's the same USB driver so it should work too.
- 5y ago
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
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.
throwaway316943 5y ago
I just want to sit on my deck and code on a sunny day. Why does the market not see me?
RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
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 5y ago
At the bottom: > IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.
dmos62 5y ago
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.
- ultrarunner 5y ago
  This is something that was impressed on me by the Hackintosh world— desktops are comparatively easy to build because you can always buy hardware that has preexistent drivers written. For laptops, everything is proprietary, often with only enough ACPI implemented to get Windows to boot. Usually discrete GPUs are disabled for reasons I never had need to remember, even when drivers otherwise exist.
LocalPCGuy 5y ago
I was one of the (probably few) suckers that bought an Adam tablet built around the promise of the Pixel Qi screens. It would replace e-readers (can read at the beach) and be a full-featured Android tablet. Unfortunately, while they did actually produce some of the devices and ship to early purchasers, they were plagued with delays, bugs and poor harware performance. They couldn't/wouldn't get authorization to use the Google Play Store, and so tried to produce their own with (I think) the goal of trying to be a mini-Apple (hardware/OS custom designed). It also was produced right when Android 2.x was being phased on, Android 3 was not being adopted and Android 4+ was still around the corner. Supposedly the company behind them, Notion Ink, produced a couple other devices despite such a horrific launch with the Adam, but I stopped paying attention as I would never send them another cent after my poor experience, which I chalk up to a learning experience on my part on who to trust with my money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_tablet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_tablet

68 points by spaniard89277 5y ago

luke2m 5y ago

I wish someone made netbooks again.

vnxli 5y ago
Same. With a full OS. Chromebooks don’t cut it for me
- maccard 5y ago
  They're not 300 bucks, buy a surface go or a MacBook air ticks all the boxes of what I want in a netbook!
dTal 5y ago
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.
- iagovar 5y ago
  What do you do with such PC? I mean, I'm pretty sure it's very difficult to code, use excel, and the like.
  - gumby 5y ago
    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.
  - dTal 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
    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.
- aasasd 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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.
GoToRO 5y ago
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 5y ago
Pinebook pro is serving me fairly well in this area. Chromebook like specs but normal desktop Linux.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  A bit short on memory and hardware support is still a gamble.
pjmlp 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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.
cstross 5y ago
A number of Chinese companies have colonized that form factor: GPD: https://www.gpd.hk/product https://www.gpd.hk/product One Netbook: https://1netbook.com/ 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/ 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.
rektide 5y ago
tablets and Bluetooth keyboard have filled the role well for me.

iagovar 5y ago

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-built-e-ink-laptop-project/118 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 5y ago
I had one of those display panels on a rugged Win7 tablet and it was pretty impressive.
- iagovar 5y ago
  Would you say it could be possible to code with such display if it was attached to a laptop?
  - wzdd 5y ago
    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.

the-dude 5y ago

Uhhh, wasn't the OLPC the first? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child

gumby 5y ago
Yes. The PixelQi screen in this laptop was developed for the olpc.

tempodox 5y ago

> IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.

robinsoh 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

1996 5y ago

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/ https://little-beans.net/review/yogabook-c930/ Linux driver is WIP on https://github.com/aleksb/yogabook-c930-linux-eink-driver https://github.com/aleksb/yogabook-c930-linux-eink-driver

totetsu 5y ago
I think there's one of these in the local bookoff..
- 1996 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Check my link for github, IIRC I think it's the same USB driver so it should work too.
5y ago

ocdtrekkie 5y ago

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.

throwaway316943 5y ago

I just want to sit on my deck and code on a sunny day. Why does the market not see me?

RodgerTheGreat 5y ago

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 5y ago

At the bottom: > IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.

dmos62 5y ago

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.

ultrarunner 5y ago
This is something that was impressed on me by the Hackintosh world— desktops are comparatively easy to build because you can always buy hardware that has preexistent drivers written. For laptops, everything is proprietary, often with only enough ACPI implemented to get Windows to boot. Usually discrete GPUs are disabled for reasons I never had need to remember, even when drivers otherwise exist.

LocalPCGuy 5y ago

I was one of the (probably few) suckers that bought an Adam tablet built around the promise of the Pixel Qi screens. It would replace e-readers (can read at the beach) and be a full-featured Android tablet. Unfortunately, while they did actually produce some of the devices and ship to early purchasers, they were plagued with delays, bugs and poor harware performance. They couldn't/wouldn't get authorization to use the Google Play Store, and so tried to produce their own with (I think) the goal of trying to be a mini-Apple (hardware/OS custom designed). It also was produced right when Android 2.x was being phased on, Android 3 was not being adopted and Android 4+ was still around the corner. Supposedly the company behind them, Notion Ink, produced a couple other devices despite such a horrific launch with the Adam, but I stopped paying attention as I would never send them another cent after my poor experience, which I chalk up to a learning experience on my part on who to trust with my money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_tablet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_tablet