2 ms·

Outdoor visibility can be solved with a brighter screen. To an extent, but eye strain is reduced quite a bit when surfaces are front-lit by the environment rat

Outdoor visibility can be solved with a brighter screen. To an extent, but eye strain is reduced quite a bit when surfaces are front-lit by the environment rather than back-lit by a uniform light. No amount of trickery like pointer trails will make up for the fact that the pointer lags behind the input by a very noticeable amount. As I understand it, small parts of an e-ink screen can be updated very quickly, but sacrificing grayscale accuracy and glitchiness. Either way, I'd 100% buy an e-ink laptop with specs comparable to current developer laptops, so how many people does it take to make a market for that?

cassianoleal 5y ago
Fair points, and I'd love to find that out. Perhaps start lobbying with one of the existing laptop manufacturers? They might do some market research to understand if there is an actual market for it. > I'd 100% buy an e-ink laptop > how many people does it take to make a market for that? I honestly have no idea but my guess is, more than one. Probably _a lot_ more. Not only the company would need to sell the first batch but they'd have to keep improving on it, selling more and getting them replaced constantly, otherwise it would become vapourware after the first (few) iterations. If the first iteration is not great, at least some users will hold off and think twice about getting the second. If it's not good enough for a lot of the users, I suspect it would go totally bust after the second iteration. It's not just the cost of the hardware either, they would likely need to solve drivers, and if it's going to be a dev laptop, they'd at least need to support both Linux and Windows. This is no small feat. Sure, they could try to offload drivers and software to the display manufacturer, but now you'd have to prove to them that there's a market worth pursuing as well.

cassianoleal 5y ago

Fair points, and I'd love to find that out. Perhaps start lobbying with one of the existing laptop manufacturers? They might do some market research to understand if there is an actual market for it. > I'd 100% buy an e-ink laptop > how many people does it take to make a market for that? I honestly have no idea but my guess is, more than one. Probably _a lot_ more. Not only the company would need to sell the first batch but they'd have to keep improving on it, selling more and getting them replaced constantly, otherwise it would become vapourware after the first (few) iterations. If the first iteration is not great, at least some users will hold off and think twice about getting the second. If it's not good enough for a lot of the users, I suspect it would go totally bust after the second iteration. It's not just the cost of the hardware either, they would likely need to solve drivers, and if it's going to be a dev laptop, they'd at least need to support both Linux and Windows. This is no small feat. Sure, they could try to offload drivers and software to the display manufacturer, but now you'd have to prove to them that there's a market worth pursuing as well.