5 ms·

> imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to - watch any kind of media - looks 'laggy' Imagine thinking that the consumer market is only for media cons

> imagine trying to sell a laptop that is unable to - watch any kind of media - looks 'laggy' Imagine thinking that the consumer market is only for media consumers. There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support. I wouldn't argue that someone buying this machine would only use only this machine. But I know I am not alone in saying that this would be my daily driver when focus is required.

bluGill 5y ago
Not much of a market, I have to do media based training all the time, even though my 95% case is text based.
xuki 5y ago
Manufacturers need to do this at scale. It’ll be so expensive if they only make a few thousand units.
bregma 5y ago
No manager would consider signing off on devices that don't make their PowerPoint deck look great. Without the corporate or consumer market you're going to struggle to find revenue.
- paulcole 5y ago
  Managers! What a bunch of bozos who only care about how their PowerPoints look, amirite?
avar 5y ago
I'm as much of a fan of the potentials of this technology as anyone, but it really look like it's terrible to use as a main display even for non-multimedia applications. I.e. try setting your mouse or keyboard to have even 50-100ms of lag, a lot of people would find that very distracting to use even for just using a terminal Emacs/Vim & for writing plain-text. There's a reason these things are being marketed as "secondary displays", which makes perfect sense. In terms of cost I really don't see why anyone would want to do it differently anyway. A 20" LCD is dirt-cheap these days, so if you're already spending 5x or 10x that on the same size of E-Ink display why not get both?
- achow 5y ago
  > ..try setting your mouse or keyboard to have even 50-100ms of lag, a lot of people would find that very distracting to use Except that Remarkable 2 has 20ms latency, same as iPad's. [1] That makes pencil behave like a real one; that is a user cannot perceive the difference between writing on eink tablet vs writing on paper. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/remarkables-redesigned-e-paper-tablet-is-more-powerful-and-more-papery/#:~:text=The%20result%20is%20a%2020ms%20latency https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/remarkables-redesigned-e-p...
  - strangetortoise 5y ago
    While the 20ms latency on the Remarkable 2 is very impressive, let's please not say that users "cannot perceive the difference". At best the latency "does not bother" users. There are whole swaths of professions for which 20ms is a huge amount (professional gamers, musicians, etc), and even personally (And I generally view my lag perception as quite poor) the 20ms on the remarkable was noticeable enough that it did not feel as nice as having a good pen on paper.
    - andai 5y ago
      20ms latency is about average for a text editor: https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ (Not that that's a good thing...)
  - samatman 5y ago
    Apple pushed an update in iOS 13 which brings the latency on the Pencil down to 9ms. Which I remember vividly because it's when latency on the Pencil subjectively "went away" for me. Especially for tight loops in cursive, on iOS 12 the line would 'catch up' with the stylus, but at 9ms I don't perceive that. Edit: crosshatching is an even better example of a technique which feels completely different at 9ms rather than 20ms.
tw04 5y ago
> There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support. You think in 2021, when I'd argue the majority of folks that own a laptop are working remote, there's huge demand for a laptop that can't display a video feed from a zoom or WebEx meeting? That sounds extremely unlikely to me. I'd wager the demand for such a device would measure in the thousands and would never be cheap enough to sell more than a couple hundred. You'd be far, far better off just making a Bluetooth keyboard case (like the old clamcase or brydge cases) for a boox and calling it good. You'd have an ssh terminal and basic office apps as supported by Android.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > a laptop that can't display a video feed Actually, those displays do. They may work fairly well for the purpose. When I tested those capabilities years ago, the chief issue was with ghosting; the second with choosing either high definition with strong artefacts or fast, cleaner low definition; the third was with having algorithms that minimize dot switching (which is energy costly). But there is a possibility that newer refresh algorithms fixed most of that. Even at the state of a few years ago, to just see talking heads and presentations the video capabilities of EPD were already more than adequate. It makes little sense energy wise (wrong instrument), but it is doable. Those who want the EPD properties for production may see little loss in the lower video quality - provided the issues I listed above have been mitigated, foremostly the ghosting. -- Edit: I checked on YT and, look, it seems to me that video quality on EPD has boosted to incredible levels. See my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29430696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29430696 or directly the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqASRsIWVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqASRsIWVw Surely such laptop would be able to «display a video feed». Suboptimally. (Yet, in a way, amazingly.)
  - kcplate 5y ago
    The ghosting on that even as good as it is would drive me crazy.
willcipriano 5y ago
"IT gave me a crappy black and white laptop. They are so behind."
daneel_w 5y ago
Are you implying that contrast and color is disrupting your focus, and that full-screen flicker during movement increases your focus?
exhilaration 5y ago
In addition to the videoconferencing others have brought up, pretty much every Fortune 500 out there has extensive training requirements for their laptop-using employees - that content is a mix of video and slideshows. Those corps are the biggest purchasers of "work" laptops. For the uninitiated, the training I'm referring to covers everything from sexual harassment to infosec to insider trading to "why you don't really need unions".
jdavis703 5y ago
The only time I’ve “needed” to watch video at work has been for cheesy, anti-harassment training showing pre-recorded situations that are obviously illegal. The other cases are videoconferencing, where someone is basically showing a fairly static powerpoint, sprint planning board, or other, text-heavy content.
breakfastduck 5y ago
Basically every enterprise of a reasonable size is going to require their users to consume multimedia content of some sort - web calls, training materials etc. If the crux is that even you, clearly a passionate eink advocate, wouldn't be able to use it as a sole device then that essentially makes the market tiny. In fact, a secondary eink display sounds like exactly what you need. When the refresh is more capable it'll be more of an option, and I cannot wait for that to be the case. But it's just not feasible to sell a laptop with an eink display as yet.
- andai 5y ago
  This sounds more like a usecase for the Pixel Qi screens, transflective LCDs which are sunlight-readable but with normal refresh rates and which have a full-color backlit mode. Still not sure why the tech never took off...
nsxwolf 5y ago
In this day and age it's pretty hard to imagine a use case for a work laptop that completely excludes multimedia. No Zoom calls? No online learning videos? I think most workers today would hit a brick wall pretty quick if this was their only display.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  Zoom or watch videos on their phones? They’re carrying one anyway.

bluGill 5y ago

Not much of a market, I have to do media based training all the time, even though my 95% case is text based.

xuki 5y ago

Manufacturers need to do this at scale. It’ll be so expensive if they only make a few thousand units.

bregma 5y ago

No manager would consider signing off on devices that don't make their PowerPoint deck look great. Without the corporate or consumer market you're going to struggle to find revenue.

paulcole 5y ago
Managers! What a bunch of bozos who only care about how their PowerPoints look, amirite?

avar 5y ago

I'm as much of a fan of the potentials of this technology as anyone, but it really look like it's terrible to use as a main display even for non-multimedia applications. I.e. try setting your mouse or keyboard to have even 50-100ms of lag, a lot of people would find that very distracting to use even for just using a terminal Emacs/Vim & for writing plain-text. There's a reason these things are being marketed as "secondary displays", which makes perfect sense. In terms of cost I really don't see why anyone would want to do it differently anyway. A 20" LCD is dirt-cheap these days, so if you're already spending 5x or 10x that on the same size of E-Ink display why not get both?

achow 5y ago
> ..try setting your mouse or keyboard to have even 50-100ms of lag, a lot of people would find that very distracting to use Except that Remarkable 2 has 20ms latency, same as iPad's. [1] That makes pencil behave like a real one; that is a user cannot perceive the difference between writing on eink tablet vs writing on paper. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/remarkables-redesigned-e-paper-tablet-is-more-powerful-and-more-papery/#:~:text=The%20result%20is%20a%2020ms%20latency https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/remarkables-redesigned-e-p...
- strangetortoise 5y ago
  While the 20ms latency on the Remarkable 2 is very impressive, let's please not say that users "cannot perceive the difference". At best the latency "does not bother" users. There are whole swaths of professions for which 20ms is a huge amount (professional gamers, musicians, etc), and even personally (And I generally view my lag perception as quite poor) the 20ms on the remarkable was noticeable enough that it did not feel as nice as having a good pen on paper.
  - andai 5y ago
    20ms latency is about average for a text editor: https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/ (Not that that's a good thing...)
- samatman 5y ago
  Apple pushed an update in iOS 13 which brings the latency on the Pencil down to 9ms. Which I remember vividly because it's when latency on the Pencil subjectively "went away" for me. Especially for tight loops in cursive, on iOS 12 the line would 'catch up' with the stylus, but at 9ms I don't perceive that. Edit: crosshatching is an even better example of a technique which feels completely different at 9ms rather than 20ms.

tw04 5y ago

> There is a whole market of enterprise products out there, and there is certainly a use case for a _work_ laptop which needs no multimedia support. You think in 2021, when I'd argue the majority of folks that own a laptop are working remote, there's huge demand for a laptop that can't display a video feed from a zoom or WebEx meeting? That sounds extremely unlikely to me. I'd wager the demand for such a device would measure in the thousands and would never be cheap enough to sell more than a couple hundred. You'd be far, far better off just making a Bluetooth keyboard case (like the old clamcase or brydge cases) for a boox and calling it good. You'd have an ssh terminal and basic office apps as supported by Android.

mdp2021 5y ago
> a laptop that can't display a video feed Actually, those displays do. They may work fairly well for the purpose. When I tested those capabilities years ago, the chief issue was with ghosting; the second with choosing either high definition with strong artefacts or fast, cleaner low definition; the third was with having algorithms that minimize dot switching (which is energy costly). But there is a possibility that newer refresh algorithms fixed most of that. Even at the state of a few years ago, to just see talking heads and presentations the video capabilities of EPD were already more than adequate. It makes little sense energy wise (wrong instrument), but it is doable. Those who want the EPD properties for production may see little loss in the lower video quality - provided the issues I listed above have been mitigated, foremostly the ghosting. -- Edit: I checked on YT and, look, it seems to me that video quality on EPD has boosted to incredible levels. See my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29430696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29430696 or directly the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqASRsIWVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KqASRsIWVw Surely such laptop would be able to «display a video feed». Suboptimally. (Yet, in a way, amazingly.)
- kcplate 5y ago
  The ghosting on that even as good as it is would drive me crazy.

willcipriano 5y ago

"IT gave me a crappy black and white laptop. They are so behind."

daneel_w 5y ago

Are you implying that contrast and color is disrupting your focus, and that full-screen flicker during movement increases your focus?

exhilaration 5y ago

In addition to the videoconferencing others have brought up, pretty much every Fortune 500 out there has extensive training requirements for their laptop-using employees - that content is a mix of video and slideshows. Those corps are the biggest purchasers of "work" laptops. For the uninitiated, the training I'm referring to covers everything from sexual harassment to infosec to insider trading to "why you don't really need unions".

jdavis703 5y ago

The only time I’ve “needed” to watch video at work has been for cheesy, anti-harassment training showing pre-recorded situations that are obviously illegal. The other cases are videoconferencing, where someone is basically showing a fairly static powerpoint, sprint planning board, or other, text-heavy content.

breakfastduck 5y ago

Basically every enterprise of a reasonable size is going to require their users to consume multimedia content of some sort - web calls, training materials etc. If the crux is that even you, clearly a passionate eink advocate, wouldn't be able to use it as a sole device then that essentially makes the market tiny. In fact, a secondary eink display sounds like exactly what you need. When the refresh is more capable it'll be more of an option, and I cannot wait for that to be the case. But it's just not feasible to sell a laptop with an eink display as yet.

andai 5y ago
This sounds more like a usecase for the Pixel Qi screens, transflective LCDs which are sunlight-readable but with normal refresh rates and which have a full-color backlit mode. Still not sure why the tech never took off...

nsxwolf 5y ago

In this day and age it's pretty hard to imagine a use case for a work laptop that completely excludes multimedia. No Zoom calls? No online learning videos? I think most workers today would hit a brick wall pretty quick if this was their only display.

Kaibeezy 5y ago
Zoom or watch videos on their phones? They’re carrying one anyway.