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> So I do dream of a laptop running on an mcu with an eink screen that has 1 month of battery but no commercial power. And running common lisp at boot as that's

by jll29 2y ago

> So I do dream of a laptop running on an mcu with an eink screen that has 1 month of battery but no commercial power. And running common lisp at boot as that's all I need anyway. I am close to just forking over 10k to have one custom made, but still hope someone else will do it. I share that dream (and have written a few times about it in comments on HN). In case you find one, or go ahead with having one built, let me know. I might put in 10k as well. Specs: - low-energy CPU, no GPU - e-Ink display b/w or gray - very good keyboard (ThinkPad-type quality for intensive writing) - battery life: 2-4 weeks - size: A5 or between A5-A4 - 64 bit OS: Linux or BSD - good text editor (Emacs, Sublime) with mail client (VM), GCC/Clang++ - weight: 700-900 g - EDIT: icing on the cake: "no boot mode" that fires up a shell prompt in <2s, e.g. based on starting an OS instance that had a snapshot taken _after_ booting up, to give you the same feel of the Cosy Computing home computers of the 1980s. - because it's possible (hey, my washing machine and dishwasher don't need to boot either!).

rochav 2y ago
As someone who loves reading and uses e-readers a lot (physical books feel cooler though), the experience of typing with an e-ink display doesn't seem enjoyable, I imagine it would have quite the delas. Have you guys coded in e-ink and it is actually okay? (I want my intuition to be wrong about this so much, because that does sound appealing)
- packetlost 2y ago
  I'd take a sharp LCD display over ePaper tbh. They look almost as nice but can run at way higher refresh rates. I agree that ePaper probably isn't quite there for refresh rate for me to want to type on it
universa1 2y ago
Hmm... You might be able to build one out of a remarkable [1], as that runs linux, has support for external keyboard and might only be lacking in the battery life department, when actively used. [1] remarkable.com
- nehal3m 2y ago
  Wouldn’t a simple hack to SSH into something else (maybe over a VPN for consistency) suffice here? There looks to be a keyboard accessory available to get you damn close to what your parent wants.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> icing on the cake: "no boot mode" that fires up a shell prompt in <2s, e.g. based on starting an OS instance that had a snapshot taken _after_ booting up, That might not be needed - if you're just booting from off to a shell (no GUI, no daemons), on known/static hardware, you can probably just... actually boot in <2s. Consider ex. https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/01/23/firecracker--start-a-vm-in-less-than-a-second/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/01/23/firecracker--start-a-vm-in-l... - I can't see where a VM is inherently doing anything real hardware can't.

by jll29 2y ago

rochav 2y ago

As someone who loves reading and uses e-readers a lot (physical books feel cooler though), the experience of typing with an e-ink display doesn't seem enjoyable, I imagine it would have quite the delas. Have you guys coded in e-ink and it is actually okay? (I want my intuition to be wrong about this so much, because that does sound appealing)

packetlost 2y ago
I'd take a sharp LCD display over ePaper tbh. They look almost as nice but can run at way higher refresh rates. I agree that ePaper probably isn't quite there for refresh rate for me to want to type on it

universa1 2y ago

Hmm... You might be able to build one out of a remarkable [1], as that runs linux, has support for external keyboard and might only be lacking in the battery life department, when actively used. [1] remarkable.com

nehal3m 2y ago
Wouldn’t a simple hack to SSH into something else (maybe over a VPN for consistency) suffice here? There looks to be a keyboard accessory available to get you damn close to what your parent wants.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

> icing on the cake: "no boot mode" that fires up a shell prompt in <2s, e.g. based on starting an OS instance that had a snapshot taken _after_ booting up, That might not be needed - if you're just booting from off to a shell (no GUI, no daemons), on known/static hardware, you can probably just... actually boot in <2s. Consider ex. https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/01/23/firecracker--start-a-vm-in-less-than-a-second/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2021/01/23/firecracker--start-a-vm-in-l... - I can't see where a VM is inherently doing anything real hardware can't.