Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 26 posts

Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#1

Post by Kluny »

I'm a writer by night and a programmer by day. I have to stare at bright LCD all day for work because I don't have a choice right now, but when I'm writing, an e-Ink display would be more than enough, and much, much easier on my eyes.

My dream would be something with a Mac keyboard, a 13-inch e-ink display like a kindle, a simple word processor (rich text only, no need for MS word or anything fancy), days of battery power, light weight, and a simple means of transferring snippets of text and document files from my main machine or phone to the tablet. I would probably do research on a "real" computer then copy and paste snippets to the word processor machine as needed.

Internet connectivity for basic email and file transfer would be nice, but I can save the facebooking and the gaming for my main computer.

Anyone else thinks this is a good idea?

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#2

Post by f_allwein »

Yes, that might be nice to have. The One Laptop Per Child laptop (XO) had a dual-mode display with a "Reflective (backlight off) monochrome mode for low-power use in sunlight" [1]. Does not seem to have caught on though. Wasn't the same, but as far as I remember, it was alright.

I guess the majority of users would not want a greyscale display (or at least manufacturers think so).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#3

Post by dragonwriter »

I think the problem is that e-ink (and similar, e-ink itself is, IIRC, a particular brand) displays are slow (and possibly power-intensive) to update. They are excellent for their optimized uses, where updates are (compared to typical laptop displays) infrequent, but perhaps not otherwise.

I know there has been work on faster and color e-ink (etc.) displays, but I don't know that there is much progress toward the point where they would make sense for general workloads.

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#4

Post by Kluny »

dragonwriter wrote: post #3

I think the problem is that e-ink (and similar, e-ink itself is, IIRC, a particular brand) displays are slow (and possibly power-intensive) to update. They are excellent for their optimized uses, where updates are (compared to typical laptop displays) infrequent, but perhaps not otherwise. I know there has been work on faster and color e-ink (etc.) displays, but I don't know that there is much progress toward the poi…

Do you mean power intensive if you're updating the screen constantly, like you would if typing?

This article mentions that they're very efficient:http://www.wired.com/2016/05/get-ready-world-covered-electro...

"...[e-ink price tags] will last two to five years on the coin-cell battery that comes inside."

That refers to tags that are updated once or twice a day at most though.

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#5

Post by jonbruner »

There's a stripped-down, e-ink word processor similar to what you're describing called Freewrite (https://getfreewrite.com/). It launched on Kickstarter as Hemingwrite a couple of years ago. It's got an e-ink display and syncs documents over WiFi.

I think the real selling point is a distraction-free venue for writing, but the e-ink display could be a plus as well.

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#6

Post by Kluny »

jonbruner wrote: post #5

There's a stripped-down, e-ink word processor similar to what you're describing called Freewrite ( https://getfreewrite.com/ ). It launched on Kickstarter as Hemingwrite a couple of years ago. It's got an e-ink display and syncs documents over WiFi. I think the real selling point is a distraction-free venue for writing, but the e-ink display could be a plus as well.

That's exactly what I'm after. Thanks for the link.

edit checked it out. screen is parallel to typing surface, looks like a recipe for hideous neck pain. I'll wait til v2 I guess. Still, nice to see that a market exists.

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#7

Post by dragonwriter »

Kluny wrote: post #4
dragonwriter wrote: post #3

I think the problem is that e-ink (and similar, e-ink itself is, IIRC, a particular brand) displays are slow (and possibly power-intensive) to update. They are excellent for their optimized uses, where updates are (compared to typical laptop displays) infrequent, but perhaps not otherwise. I know there has been work on faster and color e-ink (etc.) displays, but I don't know that there is much progress toward the poi…

Do you mean power intensive if you're updating the screen constantly, like you would if typing? This article mentions that they're very efficient: http://www.wired.com/2016/05/get-ready-world-covered-electro... "...[e-ink price tags] will last two to five years on the coin-cell battery that comes inside." That refers to tags that are updated once or twice a day at most though.

> Do you mean power intensive if you're updating the screen constantly, like you would if typing?

That's what I meant. (And I'm not sure; ISTR that they are more power intensive for updates, but I don't know in typical general-computer-use cycle how they would fare against more typical laptop displays, if it would just be reducing their advantage or flipping to a disadvantage.)

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#8

Post by Kluny »

dragonwriter wrote: post #7
Kluny wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean power intensive if you're updating the screen constantly, like you would if typing? This article mentions that they're very efficient: http://www.wired.com/2016/05/get-ready-world-covered-electro... "...[e-ink price tags] will last two to five years on the coin-cell battery that comes inside." That refers to tags that are updated once or twice a day at most though.

> Do you mean power intensive if you're updating the screen constantly, like you would if typing? That's what I meant. (And I'm not sure; ISTR that they are more power intensive for updates, but I don't know in typical general-computer-use cycle how they would fare against more typical laptop displays, if it would just be reducing their advantage or flipping to a disadvantage.)

Yeah, I would be interested to know how they stack up. Seems to me that a lot of power is saved by not lighting the screen up brighter than the sun. The updates take a lot of power, I thin, because the whole screen has to be refreshed with each keystroke. But that's the same as with LCDs, isn't it?

Re: Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever?

#10

Post by GrumpyYoungMan »

The closest thing to what you're looking for would be the Dasung 13" e-ink monitor (http://dasung.com.cn) plus some sort of ultrabook. (Yes, I acknowledge that their web site looks incredibly sketchy but, insofar as I know, it is a real product.) I believe their most recent production run is sold out though, according to their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/dasungtech).

A review can be found at http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/07/10/one-week-with-dasun...

(Disclaimer: I'm neither affiliated with Dasung nor a customer.)

Post reply on HN