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Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

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Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#131

Post by voidUpdate »

hliyan wrote: post #82
jmward01 wrote: post #15

I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.

On that note, whatever happened to netbooks? As someone who writes a lot and need a mobile device to do it on, they used to be perfect. Can't seem to find the form factor anymore. Even the smallest Chromebook seems only slightly smaller than a laptop.

They're on eBay with absolutely cooked batteries lol. I bought an eepc for myself a while back, and a similar netbook recently for my partner, and while the batteries don't work very well, the netbooks themselves work alright with a lightweight Linux on them. I don't even bother with a desktop environment on mine.

I'm pretty sure the battery packs in both of them are just some 18650 in a trench coat, so at some point I'll probably attempt to replace them and hope I don't start a fire

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#132

Post by [deleted] »

hliyan wrote: post #82
jmward01 wrote: post #15

I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.

On that note, whatever happened to netbooks? As someone who writes a lot and need a mobile device to do it on, they used to be perfect. Can't seem to find the form factor anymore. Even the smallest Chromebook seems only slightly smaller than a laptop.

[deleted]

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#133

Post by wisenull »

kiicia wrote: post #107
kstrauser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, interesting. I don't know anything about it, but my Kobo Libra has settings for how often to refresh the whole screen (e.g. every N pages, at the end of the chapter, etc.).

it does not matter in practice, let's say you do a full refresh once a second, it would take more than 11 days to do 1 million refreshes, if you do full refresh once a minute, it would take 2 years

Those numbers don't seem high, at all, for me. Typing would probably cause a refresh more often than every second and even if it's delayed to be once, every second, it's still only 11 days.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#134

Post by squigz »

hulitu wrote: post #112
squigz wrote: post #25

Fairly unrelated, but loading that repo's page is nearly 200MB... Was a bit surprised at that.

> Fairly unrelated, but loading that repo's page is nearly 200MB... Was a bit surprised at that. We have more than 8 GB of RAM, TB of hard drive and GHz computing power. We are humans. We just don't care. If we can waste something, we waste it. /s

Well to be fair, bandwidth is one area that's still limited a lot of the time.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#135

Post by carlosjobim »

jmward01 wrote: post #15

I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.

Ideal for any kind of outside jobs, including for taking restaurant orders on a sunny patio.

With a stylus and hand writing recognition, the waiter wouldn't have to walk through a selection tree, but instead simply write the order like it was a traditional piece of paper.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#136

Post by carlosjobim »

nine_k wrote: post #24
jmward01 wrote: post #15

I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.

Most people sell or give away fully functional, very powerful mobile phones, because of the end of the software support. Hardware is more than capable for a long time, and is often very durable. But it takes a special kind of audience to put up with decade-old unsupported software, let alone with IBM XT-level software (which I remember using). Security is not a consideration for such devices, because of their very li…

> Most people sell or give away fully functional, very powerful mobile phones, because of the end of the software support.

They rather put their phones in a drawer because the battery isn't good anymore.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#137

Post by hypercube33 »

keyle wrote: post #19
kstrauser wrote: post #3

Take my money. No, really, this is precisely the sort of thing I've wanted for ages, and I don't have the time or resources to build it myself.

I don't know if you've seen the videos, but the latency from input to result on the screen is, very, very bad. I don't think this is actually what you want. We all want low-power retro computing but expect reasonable latency in usage. We also want WIFI working in every room and e-ink that doesn't suck and doesn't cost half a car... And the ability to browse the web (HTTPS). It's just not there yet. When someone will…

Someone else mentioned a Transreflective screen. we used to get a whole week with a Motorola Dragonball 6800 CPU and one of those screens on two AA batteries....

I want palm pilot back personally. Best mobile games still to this day.

That said a responsive x86 pocket top that also has a 5 day battery would be awesome too. Solar can change pretty quickly.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#138

Post by Cthulhu_ »

hliyan wrote: post #82
jmward01 wrote: post #15

I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.

On that note, whatever happened to netbooks? As someone who writes a lot and need a mobile device to do it on, they used to be perfect. Can't seem to find the form factor anymore. Even the smallest Chromebook seems only slightly smaller than a laptop.

You can still get netbooks or "small laptops" with 10-12" screens from Asus, Lenovo, etc. But they're not very good, definitely aimed at a budget market.

The next best thing is e.g. the Surface Laptop Go with 12.4" screens. Any higher and you have e.g. the Macbook Air.

But as another commenter pointed out, a tablet with stand / keyboard is likely the best alternative nowadays.

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#139

Post by [deleted] »

hliyan wrote: post #82
jmward01 wrote: post #15

I think there is a class of device here that is missing. Low power but forever devices that have some basic functionality. Over time I could see this taking over laptops and the like as ultra-low-power became more and more capable.

On that note, whatever happened to netbooks? As someone who writes a lot and need a mobile device to do it on, they used to be perfect. Can't seem to find the form factor anymore. Even the smallest Chromebook seems only slightly smaller than a laptop.

[deleted]

Re: Evertop: E-ink IBM XT clone with 100+ hours of battery life

#140

Post by aftergibson »

sien wrote: post #46

The idea of a laptop with an e-ink display running Linux and having days of battery life is really interesting. To save others doing what I did there is an Android tablet like this called 'Daylight' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43098318

I think the closest thing I've gotten to the Linux + E-Ink dream(for me at least) is the Pinenote with a bluetooth keyboard. It's been a surprisingly enjoyable portable device(nice wireless keyboard doesn't hurt either) and it's powerful enough to do some nice simple stuff, then disconnect they keyboard and it's back to being an book/newsfeed reader.
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