5 ms·

I live in places where the sun always shines; it's almost impossible to work normally outside (which is my preferred office) without eInk. I wish there were mor

I live in places where the sun always shines; it's almost impossible to work normally outside (which is my preferred office) without eInk. I wish there were more laptops because it works fine for coding (I have Boox devices which I use sometimes to write code). Phone same thing. Of course with the great extra of having very long battery life. My wife writes/reads books on eInk devices and I do reading, browsing and shell/coding. It works really well.

hinkley 5y ago
One Laptop Per Child had a transflective display, and I wish they'd managed to license that tech to someone else to help fund the project. IIRC, with the backlight on you got full color. With the backlight off you got greyscale.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  Together with the Pixel Qi you make reference to, there are a number of display technologies available or partially developed for outdoors use. And some are relatively old: has nobody here ever worked with, eg., a Palm Tungsten with transflective display?
  - bebna 5y ago
    N900 had a transreflective screen, officially as a selling point. I think my Surface Go first gen also has it, even when not advertised as such, because I can switch to white themes and almost work with back-light off in the direct sun.
- culopatin 5y ago
  I always wondered why we couldn’t have either a lens at the top edge of a laptop display, or a translucent case to let the sun shine in behind the screen. Maybe the colors wouldn’t be perfect but you’d get more light behind the screen no?
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Find yourself a half-silvered mirror, stick it in bright light, and put another mirror with some kind of diffuser behind it. What happens is that the light in front of the mirror overwhelms the light coming from behind it. I think you'd pretty much have this problem with any kind of transmissive display, whether it's internally illuminated or relies on transmitted light. Unless you can also shade the front of the display, you'll see little. Early box cameras, the type that had a drape over the eyepiece or viewplate for the photographer to compose the image, also had this problem. All of these rely on obscuring some portion of the transmitted light to create a visible pattern. That's always going to be muted by ambient light from the front of the display. It's why we watch films in darkened cinemas but read books (reflective medium) in brightly-lit libraries (or at least with a strong reading lamp nearby). Note that with any LCD-based display, the polarising layer itself blocks ~50% of the transmitted light. This is why high-ambient-light displays strongly favour reflective media. Ink on paper, paint on canvas, billboards. E-ink happens to be a rapidly-updatable version of this, though not quite as rapid as the electronicly-modulated pixels of an emissive display. What would be a game-changer would be a material (or suite of materials) which change colour under some rapidly-switchable field (probably electric or magnetic), preferably either on the RBG or CMYK colour space, probably from a white baseline. A response in the 16--120Hz range would be sufficient for video. These would produce the effect of a printed or painted display that could present high-response video and which you'd illuminate from the front rather than back. Though I think I'm already shuddering to consider the possible applications....
nivenkos 5y ago
It's monochrome though right? I can't imagine using a monochrome computer screen nowadays.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  There are color touchscreens (Boox has one, there are phones that have those), but yeah I work in monochrome when there is sun or when I run out of battery; it works very well for me. But obviously YMMV! It beats sitting inside or squinting into my Macbook screen by a large stretch.
  - the_af 5y ago
    What about the refresh/redraw speed? I suppose e-ink has evolved past Kindle Paperwhite standards, because otherwise I can't see how you can use it for coding. Turning a page has a terrible redraw speed, it would drive me mad -- it looks like it was with LCD screens when they were first introduced: terrible. It doesn't matter for reading books, of course.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      I'm sure you don't have to wait for each letter to appear before typing the next, I would expect some slowdown but I don't think it would be as bad as you seem to imagine
      - the_af 5y ago
        Depends on how sensitive you are. For Kindle/book reading the image is static for long periods of time. For "interactive" screens (like when coding) it would drive me mad. I was one of those people who could notice poor refresh rates in CRT (clicking teeth made it worse) and it drove me crazy. This tech is not for me then.
        cweagans 5y ago
        A whole-screen refresh is slow, but typing does not require refreshing the entire screen. You can update small regions of the screen very quickly (which is what devices like e.g. the Remarkable do for writing).
officeplant 5y ago
Living the e-ink dream. I keep waiting for some sort of ARM powered e-ink laptop to materialize out of the ether, but it hasn't happened yet.
- bebna 5y ago
  Check out the pinenote project. It is intended to be more than just a hackable eink reader slab.
  - officeplant 5y ago
    Pinephone and Pinebook Pro owner. Eventually it will be added to the collection.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Yeah, same, so I 'wing it' by having a Linux machine in my bag and ssh.
- rchaud 5y ago
  I have a Boox Note Air that runs Android. I imagine the processor is ARM-based. I can hook up a BT keyboard + mouse and use it like I would a regular tablet. Plus, it has 3 screen refresh settings (low, med, high), and the middle one makes typing a very nice experience
  - officeplant 5y ago
    I'll have to check that out. Especially if it can be tinkered with via a custom rom like lineage.

hinkley 5y ago

One Laptop Per Child had a transflective display, and I wish they'd managed to license that tech to someone else to help fund the project. IIRC, with the backlight on you got full color. With the backlight off you got greyscale.

mdp2021 5y ago
Together with the Pixel Qi you make reference to, there are a number of display technologies available or partially developed for outdoors use. And some are relatively old: has nobody here ever worked with, eg., a Palm Tungsten with transflective display?
- bebna 5y ago
  N900 had a transreflective screen, officially as a selling point. I think my Surface Go first gen also has it, even when not advertised as such, because I can switch to white themes and almost work with back-light off in the direct sun.
culopatin 5y ago
I always wondered why we couldn’t have either a lens at the top edge of a laptop display, or a translucent case to let the sun shine in behind the screen. Maybe the colors wouldn’t be perfect but you’d get more light behind the screen no?
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Find yourself a half-silvered mirror, stick it in bright light, and put another mirror with some kind of diffuser behind it. What happens is that the light in front of the mirror overwhelms the light coming from behind it. I think you'd pretty much have this problem with any kind of transmissive display, whether it's internally illuminated or relies on transmitted light. Unless you can also shade the front of the display, you'll see little. Early box cameras, the type that had a drape over the eyepiece or viewplate for the photographer to compose the image, also had this problem. All of these rely on obscuring some portion of the transmitted light to create a visible pattern. That's always going to be muted by ambient light from the front of the display. It's why we watch films in darkened cinemas but read books (reflective medium) in brightly-lit libraries (or at least with a strong reading lamp nearby). Note that with any LCD-based display, the polarising layer itself blocks ~50% of the transmitted light. This is why high-ambient-light displays strongly favour reflective media. Ink on paper, paint on canvas, billboards. E-ink happens to be a rapidly-updatable version of this, though not quite as rapid as the electronicly-modulated pixels of an emissive display. What would be a game-changer would be a material (or suite of materials) which change colour under some rapidly-switchable field (probably electric or magnetic), preferably either on the RBG or CMYK colour space, probably from a white baseline. A response in the 16--120Hz range would be sufficient for video. These would produce the effect of a printed or painted display that could present high-response video and which you'd illuminate from the front rather than back. Though I think I'm already shuddering to consider the possible applications....

nivenkos 5y ago

It's monochrome though right? I can't imagine using a monochrome computer screen nowadays.

tluyben2 5y ago
There are color touchscreens (Boox has one, there are phones that have those), but yeah I work in monochrome when there is sun or when I run out of battery; it works very well for me. But obviously YMMV! It beats sitting inside or squinting into my Macbook screen by a large stretch.
- the_af 5y ago
  What about the refresh/redraw speed? I suppose e-ink has evolved past Kindle Paperwhite standards, because otherwise I can't see how you can use it for coding. Turning a page has a terrible redraw speed, it would drive me mad -- it looks like it was with LCD screens when they were first introduced: terrible. It doesn't matter for reading books, of course.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    I'm sure you don't have to wait for each letter to appear before typing the next, I would expect some slowdown but I don't think it would be as bad as you seem to imagine
    - the_af 5y ago
      Depends on how sensitive you are. For Kindle/book reading the image is static for long periods of time. For "interactive" screens (like when coding) it would drive me mad. I was one of those people who could notice poor refresh rates in CRT (clicking teeth made it worse) and it drove me crazy. This tech is not for me then.
      - cweagans 5y ago
        A whole-screen refresh is slow, but typing does not require refreshing the entire screen. You can update small regions of the screen very quickly (which is what devices like e.g. the Remarkable do for writing).

officeplant 5y ago

Living the e-ink dream. I keep waiting for some sort of ARM powered e-ink laptop to materialize out of the ether, but it hasn't happened yet.

bebna 5y ago
Check out the pinenote project. It is intended to be more than just a hackable eink reader slab.
- officeplant 5y ago
  Pinephone and Pinebook Pro owner. Eventually it will be added to the collection.
tluyben2 5y ago
Yeah, same, so I 'wing it' by having a Linux machine in my bag and ssh.
rchaud 5y ago
I have a Boox Note Air that runs Android. I imagine the processor is ARM-based. I can hook up a BT keyboard + mouse and use it like I would a regular tablet. Plus, it has 3 screen refresh settings (low, med, high), and the middle one makes typing a very nice experience
- officeplant 5y ago
  I'll have to check that out. Especially if it can be tinkered with via a custom rom like lineage.