51–60 of 121 posts
Great submission markkat and don't worry about it too much. Whether or not this specific company is real, I'm not sure, but I am certain the tech to do a product like this exists.
The "copy" under the photos is terrible. Doesn't seem real.
Is this a joke or is this really just a legal pad for $99? (Serious question.)
"no superfluous features" ... but it includes an MP3 player.
"any ordinary pen or pencil usage" "real paper design"
"solar energy backside cover"
"no antialiasing (on of our best features)"
"180 hours battery life" ... So 180 hours of OCR on a 6mm thick device? Sure. That's totally plausible.
HN's bullshit detector has been firmly switched to the "off" position.
Am I the only one who thinks this is an obvious fake?!!! 180 hrs battery, usb, SD, wifi, mp3 player - all for $99! Hardware guys please let us know if this is even feasible and what the BOM would be! I'm guessing us doodlers & sketchers will have to wait a few more years. EDIT: just saw the Boogie Board post and clearly I'm wrong about the feasibility of a basic slate. Someone please make one: just needs sketch and U…
Isn't the poor refresh rate one of the disadvantages of e-ink displays? And isn't the long battery life a function of use (ie. e-ink displays only use significant power when refreshing)? Writing on displays also has texture and resolution issues that can't be ignored: it needs to look and feel like a paper drawing. Lots of hard questions, but if they pulled it off, I'll be first in line.
You can see on the kindle the loading indicator is able to spin at a decent refresh rate; ditto word selection, menu selection, etc. This is because you are waiting on few elements to make the physical change at a time.
A simple pen based drawing surface would only update a few pixels at a time would and presumably work quickly as well.
(Any corrections welcome; this is just sort of how I assume it works based on using a kindle, not based on much looking into of how eink actually works)
The last thing I need is another place to write by hand. Handwriting is an incredibly inefficient way to transmit information from brain to computer, especially for me (I'm dysgraphic). I just want a very long-life note-taking tablet with a decent keyboard. There's a reason the old Tandy 100 is still in use by a handful of journalists. Nothing has really taken the place of it, as far as I know. The Kindle keyboard is…
QWERTY keyboard with proper keys in a decent shape and that aren't much smaller than netbook keys. But it'll fit into a pocket and run for plenty of time on AA batteries. I could and did touch type on it fast enough to take very usable notes in meetings. And for those that want to draw diagrams, it's got a touchscreen too.
Honestly, I've never found anything quite as good and think it's a major shame they're not still available. A smartphone with the keyboard from one of these things would be brilliant; I just can't understand why companies play about with these silly modified calculator keyboards when there was something so much better available in 1997. If I were HTC I'd be making it, if I were a VC I'd be funding whoever could make it.
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The last thing I need is another place to write by hand. Handwriting is an incredibly inefficient way to transmit information from brain to computer, especially for me (I'm dysgraphic). I just want a very long-life note-taking tablet with a decent keyboard. There's a reason the old Tandy 100 is still in use by a handful of journalists. Nothing has really taken the place of it, as far as I know. The Kindle keyboard is…
Psion Series 5 or Revo. QWERTY keyboard with proper keys in a decent shape and that aren't much smaller than netbook keys. But it'll fit into a pocket and run for plenty of time on AA batteries. I could and did touch type on it fast enough to take very usable notes in meetings. And for those that want to draw diagrams, it's got a touchscreen too. Honestly, I've never found anything quite as good and think it's a majo…
My solution was to buy a Psion 5MX, not because it's better built, but because it came out 2-3 years after the 5 and thus will last on average 2 years longer - which means they'll break in 2012. Also stockpiling the 5MX's so when mine breaks in 2012, I'll have 3 or 4 more to last me a few more years.
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Psion Series 5 or Revo. QWERTY keyboard with proper keys in a decent shape and that aren't much smaller than netbook keys. But it'll fit into a pocket and run for plenty of time on AA batteries. I could and did touch type on it fast enough to take very usable notes in meetings. And for those that want to draw diagrams, it's got a touchscreen too. Honestly, I've never found anything quite as good and think it's a majo…
In my experience, the Psion 5's are starting to break down now. I went through 4 in a year! My solution was to buy a Psion 5MX, not because it's better built, but because it came out 2-3 years after the 5 and thus will last on average 2 years longer - which means they'll break in 2012. Also stockpiling the 5MX's so when mine breaks in 2012, I'll have 3 or 4 more to last me a few more years.
(Disclaimer - I stopped using it because I changed jobs and no longer needed its functionality, then eventually went for a netbook as I no longer so needed its portability and valued being able to run Visual Studio! I'd still recommend them to anyone who really wants a portable machine rather than just a toy though; in some ways I genuinely prefer it to my Android phone.)
Apart from "cool", is there a tangible advantage to this over a pad of paper? I don't see one. It looks to me like a future expensive thing I forgot on the bus. I'd also for sure lose the pen and end up using it to support real paper to write on. Now, if you could do things like zoom, copy/paste, and connect (wifi) with a computer/projector, I could see buying one.
Currently, I could take notes on a laptop, but in mathematics this is extremely difficult (you have to be very very fast with LaTeX), and realtime diagram entering/editing is basically impossible with a laptop.