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Building an E-Ink Laptop

alexsoto.dev

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Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#151

Post by foolmeonce »

mvanbaak wrote: post #145
alex-a-soto wrote: post #2

Hey folks, I've recently had the idea of building an e-ink laptop from the devices I had at home. I decided to document the process and share each step of the way: Some of the posts planned for the series are: Dasung Paperlike HD-FT teardown, Thinkpad T480 teardown, Creating the prototype, Installing and configuring NixOS, M-x e-ink-laptop-mode If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out.

Why nixos? Context: https://hands-on.cloud/why-you-should-never-ever-use-nixos/

This is about porting a distribution to hardware. Nixos is really great at bootstrapping/rebuilding a system against your own clone of nixpkgs.

The complaints of the article ends with any Linux distribution and docker. I'm not sure which distributions would use docker in their own porting process. Most distributions have a huge distinction between users and maintainers and probably no one who is a target of that article is aware of the pains of maintaining a Linux distribution when they agree traditional distributions are fun.

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#152

Post by coldtea »

fortran77 wrote: post #127
robinsoh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm stating the fact that other companies can't improve the same exact technology (as defined in the patent). That's equivalent to saying Samsung can't improve the same exact technology used by AU Optronics. Rightfully so. > So this isn't about other companies still being able to make improved eg. OSes in the general sense, but if they can build improved OSes that also leverage the same patented techniques where ne…

Thanks for taking the time to argue with this person. I withheld--despite the downvote brigade--because I presume he has some other agenda for promoting this story.

Thanks for passive aggresively talking to a third party about me as "this person" and thanking them for the courage to discuss with me.

Thanks for having some persecution syndrome or conspiracy theory about "the downvote brigade" and about me having "some other agenda for promoting this story".

In actually, I don't give a duck about the E-ink industry, but I do dislike the effect patents have in general, and am talking out of general principles about that.

You might be happy with E-ink patents in particular or patens in general. You might also be an E-ink industry insider (wouldn't that make you the one that is more possible to have an "agenda" ot at least a vested interest?), and have far more information that me, a mere e-ink consumer, about the impact of patents there.

You could still respond (or not respond) on a thread about the impact on patents (on e-ink and in general) without being rude and second-guessing the other person.

How about that?

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#153

Post by coldtea »

robinsoh wrote: post #123
coldtea wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're making a claim equivalent to saying Microsoft holds patents on operating system technologies, other companies can't improve the same technology. No, I'm stating the fact that other companies can't improve the same exact technology (as defined in the patent). If Microsoft has patents on aspects X, Y, Z of filesystems, other companies can still make filesystems, even improved ones. But they can't make a filesy…

> I'm stating the fact that other companies can't improve the same exact technology (as defined in the patent). That's equivalent to saying Samsung can't improve the same exact technology used by AU Optronics. Rightfully so. > So this isn't about other companies still being able to make improved eg. OSes in the general sense, but if they can build improved OSes that also leverage the same patented techniques where ne…

>That's equivalent to saying Samsung can't improve the same exact technology used by AU Optronics. Rightfully so.

Well, that "rightly so" is where we disagree - and what patents were made to provide. If you are pro-patent, then that's that.

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#154

Post by robinsoh »

coldtea wrote: post #153
robinsoh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm stating the fact that other companies can't improve the same exact technology (as defined in the patent). That's equivalent to saying Samsung can't improve the same exact technology used by AU Optronics. Rightfully so. > So this isn't about other companies still being able to make improved eg. OSes in the general sense, but if they can build improved OSes that also leverage the same patented techniques where ne…

> That's equivalent to saying Samsung can't improve the same exact technology used by AU Optronics. Rightfully so. Well, that "rightly so" is where we disagree - and what patents were made to provide. If you are pro-patent, then that's that.

> If you are pro-patent, then that's that.

:-) I wouldn't describe myself as pro-patent. I would say I'm pro-fair play. If Alice spends years in front of a fume hood developing a new ITO coating or polymer that reduces cost and improves manufacturability of a product, then she deserves to be protected from corporate VP Big Bob getting his engineer to just reverse engineer Alice's work. If you agree that Alice's work deserves some protection for some period of time, then we both share the same concept of right/wrong. Whether patents are the best way, and how they can be made more effective and less vulnerable to turkeys and vultures, is a discussion we could have in good faith. But at the very least we would need to base the discussion on facts rather than what I see in some other posts (not alleging you have done this) where they're writing Kiplingesque just-so stories to explain display product pricing while not knowing the difference between ITO and AgNP.

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#155

Post by davisr »

nemoniac wrote: post #121
davisr wrote: post #58

You can use Parabola-rM[1] with a reMarkable 1 tablet as an all-in-one solution, and like the T480 can be totally freedom-respecting using only libre software. [1]: http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/

Does it also work with reMarkable 2?

No, only RM1, but TBF no one has tried much low-level stuff with RM2.

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#156

Post by stainforth »

robinsoh wrote: post #148
stainforth wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a chicken or egg argument. Of course you'll give me wholesale pricing on volume in any market. But are product creators scared off when a big part of each unit's cost will go to license the screen technology?

> This sounds like a chicken or egg argument. I don't follow. I also don't see how it is different than any other industry be it bricks or CPUs. Buy a few and the per unit price is high. Buy millions and the per unit price is low. > Of course you'll give me wholesale pricing on volume in any market. Yes. > But are product creators scared off when a big part of each unit's cost will go to license the screen technology…

Well I'm asking since you work in the industry, how much does it cost to license e-ink technology?

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#157

Post by alex-a-soto »

chx wrote: post #150
alex-a-soto wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing project! Thank you for sharing. I will be following for progress/updates. How do you like the 7.8 not-ereader. I've contemplated getting their 103 model.

It was love at first sight. Since the Android update it's even better. It does what I want from it: it reads eBooks and becomes a second screen in an emergency. Most of my work is text focused so black-and-white is not a problem here. I know in theory it could do even more but I don't need that. I am reading a lot, I had an eReader with me for more than a decade now always and if it doubles as an emergency monitor, t…

Thank you for sharing! I was thinking of getting the 103 for all of the reasons you mentioned, alternating reading ebooks and using it as a second screen. I'm going to add it to my list!

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#158

Post by robinsoh »

stainforth wrote: post #156
robinsoh wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like a chicken or egg argument. I don't follow. I also don't see how it is different than any other industry be it bricks or CPUs. Buy a few and the per unit price is high. Buy millions and the per unit price is low. > Of course you'll give me wholesale pricing on volume in any market. Yes. > But are product creators scared off when a big part of each unit's cost will go to license the screen technology…

Well I'm asking since you work in the industry, how much does it cost to license e-ink technology?

I don't know what you're asking. What does "license e-ink technology" mean specifically? It would be equivalent to asking how much does it cost to license Microsoft technology or Google technology? I hope you can see how the question is unanswerable.

Re: Building an E-Ink Laptop

#159

Post by jonathanstrange »

vwoolf wrote: post #128
jonathanstrange wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the e-ink screen was on the wrong side of the device. People like me and the author need an e-ink display for writing in broad sunlight.

Probably not what you are looking for, but this: https://getfreewrite.com could be good for you.

Thanks a lot for the link! So this is like a remake of the Alpha Smart but with e-ink screen. Apart from the price it's nice but unfortunately I need one Windows program running on such a device (a specialized Word processor with features no other word processors have).
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