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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

#141

Post by swiftcoder »

Retric wrote: post #34
nine_k wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve never dumped a phone over its software. Ware, damage, swapping networks, meaningfully better hardware, or just losing the things explain basically all the replacements me or my friends / family have done. Sure, eventually people stop updating software to work on old devices but that’s because the overwhelming majority of people have already stoped using that hardware for other reasons.

My less-techy relatives are routinely forced to upgrade because all of their apps drop support for their hardware.

I'm in the process of replacing my nephew's tablet, because his favourite apps (Audible and YouTube) can no longer be installed on Android 7 - the newest OS his hardware can run.

My mum bought a second-hand iPhone 8 a couple of years ago, because the battery in her iPhone 4s finally died. She'll have to replace that soon, though, because a bunch of critical apps (her bank, health insurance, and a few others) no longer support that screen resolution properly, and often place buttons outside of the visible screen area.

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

#142

Post by tomrod »

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…

Software and battery, I reckon, are the mobile phone arena's area for disruption.

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

#143

Post by api »

For a true prepper PC a RISC-V machine running Linux with these kinds of specs would be ideal. Even more cool would be a crank charger along with the solar panels.

Outfit it with a LORA modem capable of running one of those peer to peer LORA mesh text messaging protocols.

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

#144

Post by criddell »

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.

What I want is a modern Tandy 102. Back in the 80's these things were getting days or even weeks of use on a set of AA batteries. I'd love to see a modern version of this - a low power, highly constrained device (not running Linux), that runs on AA batteries. With modern components, you would think you could makes something like the 102 that lasts for months an AA batteries, but nobody has made one.

The closest things I've seen are the AlphaSmart Dana (discontinued), Apple eMate (discontinued) and the Freewrite line of devices.

I've thought about trying to make one myself from an Raspberry Pi, but those are not very low power and they seem to be tied to Linux (or at least I'm not aware of alternative operating systems).

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

#145

Post by pjmlp »

roywashere wrote: post #130
pjmlp wrote: post #103

While I love the work, it is more like an adaptation, I am quite certain there were no PS/2 keyboards back in XT days, rather the classical din pin one. PS/2 keyboards are early 1990's.

I'm not even sure why you would point this out. I'm also quite certain there were also no USB flash drives, SD card support, Wifi networking and e-ink displays in the early 1990s. It's not a replica in any way, it does not claim to be that. Just a cool compute device!

What does clone mean?

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

#146

Post by patapong »

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.

I agree! Ten years ago, we had netbooks with adequate performance for many tasks, and battery life of 10+ hours. Given the advances in CPUs since then, we should be able to pack similar performance onto much smaller CPUs, using much less power. Screens have also advanced since then.

Where are the super thin and light laptops that allow me to write emails, do light coding and browsing and SSH into other devices with 50 hours of battery life?

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

#147

Post by Atheb »

patapong wrote: post #146
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.

I agree! Ten years ago, we had netbooks with adequate performance for many tasks, and battery life of 10+ hours. Given the advances in CPUs since then, we should be able to pack similar performance onto much smaller CPUs, using much less power. Screens have also advanced since then. Where are the super thin and light laptops that allow me to write emails, do light coding and browsing and SSH into other devices with 5…

Not a perfect solution but I've used an ipad with a magic keyboard for this exact purpose when travelling.

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

#148

Post by creshal »

patapong wrote: post #146
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.

I agree! Ten years ago, we had netbooks with adequate performance for many tasks, and battery life of 10+ hours. Given the advances in CPUs since then, we should be able to pack similar performance onto much smaller CPUs, using much less power. Screens have also advanced since then. Where are the super thin and light laptops that allow me to write emails, do light coding and browsing and SSH into other devices with 5…

> Where are the super thin and light laptops that allow me to write emails, do light coding and browsing and SSH into other devices with 50 hours of battery life?

They got eaten by tablets. We used to have netbooks and subnotebooks, but they were too weak for mainline Windows after XP (perfectly adequate with Linux, tho), and there wasn't a clear path forward for them.

These days, iPads and Android convertibles with keyboard covers are reasonably okay for the use case, if you don't need full lap-top ergonomics (they definitely benefit from a proper table).

ARM-based laptops (Apple and otherwise) are slooowly closing that gap again, but you're "only" looking at ~20 hours battery life, last I checked. Which is still better than the last batch of subnotebooks ca. 2010, which needed like 3lbs of batteries to reach that same endurance with a dual-core 1GHz Core Duo and less RAM than your average modern tablet.

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