Live data from Hacker News

The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

hanselman.com

281–290 of 530 posts

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#281

Ah, e-readers. I'm looking for a good one since forever, but they are either too small, too slow or too costly. Hopefully technology developments will bring soon a good 10" before my eyes will need a 15" one:) Reading old books and magazines is also a problem: they're often 100% graphics with no OCRed text, therefore they're really slow, also zooming a page with diagrams on a technical book can be painful on low end…

No offense, but the article discusses 10" ereaders heavily (that's the screen size of both the reMarkable 2 and the Note Air). There's also the Kobo Elipsa if you'd like something that's totally focused on reading. I've been using a 7.8" Nova 3 myself for a few months now, and it's a dramatic improvement over the 6" Kindle I was using before. I love having a screen that's closer to the size of your average hardcover…

Thanks. They seem really nice devices, especially the Remarkable2.

The problem with working online is that most of these devices phone home regularly, and while I wouldn't mind if they read with me an electronics magazine or book, that would be different since I'd also use a reader for displaying medical prescriptions and/or other personal documents.

Broadly speaking, device manufacturers (TVs, home appliances, etc.) became obsessed with making users sign in to their own cloud and downloading their own app; no thanks, I'd rather buy a device that lets me browse shares on the local network I'm connected to, and/or save documents into their storage using a USB cable. If the reader and the media are both within my house walls, I don't see reasons to connect outside.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#282

I'm always super intrigued by the reMarkable 2, but I think it's because it paints an image of the type of person I think it'd be cool to be, someone who can just write down notes and draw stuff with a really cool, slim device. Someone who carries around moleskines and uses them, instead of just buying so many of them in different shapes and leaving them in a drawer packed to the brim with notebooks. The problem keep…

You have different selves working at different time scales. Your problem is that your short term self is winning out against your long term self. The remedy is to learn to hold your attention where you want it, so when the short term self directs your attention to the line of cocaine you can keep it on the long term goal instead. To get better at directing your attention... meditate, particularly deeply focusing on a sensation. Practice practice practice.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#283
Has anyone had any experience with e-ink monitors? I work long hours at a screen and have two problems:

1. I get eyestrain and find it hard to concentrate.

2. The bright screen seems to be very "addictive" and I find myself browsing hacker news, reddit etc. instead of working.

I wonder if an e-ink or RLCD screen might solve these problems. There are some new 25" screens coming out this year.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#284
post #188
post #14

I bought the Onyx Boox Note Air some months ago, and I must say that I'm really happy with it. Screen refresh is good, there's almost no ghosting in default mode, and refresh rates are acceptable. There are only two downsides about it: The vendor does not respect FOSS and does not publish the sources for their modified Linux kernel, and the device constantly phones home to China. However, the device can be rooted eas…

It doesn't just phone home to China. The company actually refuses to comply with the GPL because of "anti-China sentiment" and closed down their support forum when people got angry ( https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/hsyigm/on... )

> because of "anti-China sentiment"

Because yet another Chinese company flagrantly flouting a licence is really going to help with that situation…

I was considering one of their devices. I am now not.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it phones home to China count me out. I’ll go for the reMarkable tyvm I can just see me working on a brilliant invention (one can dream , right?) and putting my notes into the note boox, only to realize it gets patented before me by a Chinese company.

I know that this is obvious, but worth noting. This anxiety is not just China as a destination, but it just as relevant if it phones home to any company in any _country_.

Maybe not just as relevant, but certainly still annoying.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#286

I bought a Remarkable 2 a month or two ago because I wanted a cool hackable e-ink Linux computer. But instead I immediately started using it as an e-book and document reader and note-taking pad, and nothing else. And, so far at least, that's perfect. The screen is beautiful (a bit gray, but the black is really black so the contrast is still good), the device is thin and reasonably light, I only have to charge it once…

> I have even rediscovered the visceral pleasantness of writing by hand. A bit unrelated, but I’ve often wondered if I’m in the minority that hates writing by hand. Compared to typing, I’m much slower, and it looks terrible — I print in caps just so that it’s remotely legible. I avoid handwriting at all costs, and loath the few times it’s required.

Have you tried writing with your other hand, if you have it? Writing with my non-dominant hand is slower and more precise. It’s been twenty-odd years of practice, in part in case I lose a hand, and it continues to feel like a fun, healthy challenge.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#287
post #259

I have a remarkable 1, and, honestly, I'm deeply disappointed in it. It'd pretty slow just in terms of hardware responsiveness, which maybe the RM2 corrects, but it also just... gets most of the little things wrong in a way that makes it feel so much worse on a day to day basis than most consumer-grade tech projects. For example: it comes with its own cloud sync. Which is extremely slow and unreliable: if you upload…

do not get a boox. First they do not publish their kernel source violating GPL, second the device constantly phones home to China and third the color display is really clunky: low contrast, washed out colors and very low DPI (around 160). Wait a few generations until color eink tech is fleshed out.

Thank you. Really good to know those things.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can SSH to root over wifi out of the box! Yeah. Let me rush to put that on my main network.

Do you have SSH-exploiting self-replicating worms running on your main network?

One would hope not, but it makes connecting to less trusted networks much more risky than it needs to be. And I'm sure that's something users will regularly do.

Software updates are infrequent and they certainly aren't pushing out standalone security errata that I've seen.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#290

I'm always super intrigued by the reMarkable 2, but I think it's because it paints an image of the type of person I think it'd be cool to be, someone who can just write down notes and draw stuff with a really cool, slim device. Someone who carries around moleskines and uses them, instead of just buying so many of them in different shapes and leaving them in a drawer packed to the brim with notebooks. The problem keep…

For comparison I rarely use the pen on my iPad Pro. I think partially because of all the distractions, as soon as I grab my iPad there’s lots of other stuff I could be doing other than taking notes. And partially because the writing on glass never felt right. So it’s been more of an occasional use when I really need to sketch something. I was on the fence for the RM2 for a while for the same reasons you mentioned. Wo…

The writing/drawing/painting experience of the Apple Pencil would be massively improved if it had a small high resolution haptic speaker similar to the Switch Joycons or Steam Controller to emulate different drawing tools and surfaces.
Post reply on HN