
Ask HN: Will e-ink laptops be a thing soon, or ever? - Kluny
I&#x27;m a writer by night and a programmer by day. I have to stare at bright LCD all day for work because I don&#x27;t have a choice right now, but when I&#x27;m writing, an e-Ink display would be more than enough, and much, much easier on my eyes.<p>My dream would be something with a Mac keyboard, a 13-inch e-ink display like a kindle, a simple word processor (rich text only, no need for MS word or anything fancy), days of battery power, light weight, and a simple means of transferring snippets of text and document files from my main machine or phone to the tablet. I would probably do research on a &quot;real&quot; computer then copy and paste snippets to the word processor machine as needed.<p>Internet connectivity for basic email and file transfer would be nice, but I can save the facebooking and the gaming for my main computer.<p>Anyone else thinks this is a good idea?
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jonbruner
There's a stripped-down, e-ink word processor similar to what you're
describing called Freewrite
([https://getfreewrite.com/](https://getfreewrite.com/)). It launched on
Kickstarter as Hemingwrite a couple of years ago. It's got an e-ink display
and syncs documents over WiFi.

I think the real selling point is a distraction-free venue for writing, but
the e-ink display could be a plus as well.

~~~
Kluny
That's exactly what I'm after. Thanks for the link.

edit __checked it out. screen is parallel to typing surface, looks like a
recipe for hideous neck pain. I 'll wait til v2 I guess. Still, nice to see
that a market exists.

~~~
andrei_says_
Also, the screen is tiny. I'm wondering if someone can come up with an optical
contraption to turn this tiny-screen-on-a-keyboard into a less tiny screen
parallel to one's face.

Something like the screen magnifiers seen in Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

~~~
Kluny
Lens-based enlargment allows perfect image fidelity, while looking cool and
steampunk!

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dragonwriter
I think the problem is that e-ink (and similar, e-ink itself is, IIRC, a
particular brand) displays are slow (and possibly power-intensive) to update.
They are excellent for their optimized uses, where updates are (compared to
typical laptop displays) infrequent, but perhaps not otherwise.

I know there has been work on faster and color e-ink (etc.) displays, but I
don't know that there is much progress toward the point where they would make
sense for general workloads.

~~~
Kluny
Do you mean power intensive if you're updating the screen constantly, like you
would if typing?

This article mentions that they're very
efficient:[http://www.wired.com/2016/05/get-ready-world-covered-
electro...](http://www.wired.com/2016/05/get-ready-world-covered-electronic-
paper/)

"...[e-ink price tags] will last two to five years on the coin-cell battery
that comes inside."

That refers to tags that are updated once or twice a day at most though.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Do you mean power intensive if you're updating the screen constantly, like
> you would if typing?

That's what I meant. (And I'm not sure; ISTR that they are _more_ power
intensive for updates, but I don't know in typical general-computer-use cycle
how they would fare against more typical laptop displays, if it would just be
reducing their advantage or flipping to a disadvantage.)

~~~
Kluny
Yeah, I would be interested to know how they stack up. Seems to me that a lot
of power is saved by not lighting the screen up brighter than the sun. The
updates take a lot of power, I thin, because the whole screen has to be
refreshed with each keystroke. But that's the same as with LCDs, isn't it?

------
GrumpyYoungMan
The closest thing to what you're looking for would be the Dasung 13" e-ink
monitor ([http://dasung.com.cn](http://dasung.com.cn)) plus some sort of
ultrabook. (Yes, I acknowledge that their web site looks incredibly sketchy
but, insofar as I know, it is a real product.) I believe their most recent
production run is sold out though, according to their Facebook page
([https://www.facebook.com/dasungtech](https://www.facebook.com/dasungtech)).

A review can be found at [http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/07/10/one-week-
with-dasun...](http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/07/10/one-week-with-
dasungs-13-3-e-ink-usb-monitor-video/)

(Disclaimer: I'm neither affiliated with Dasung nor a customer.)

~~~
mattm
I had shown interest in the Dasung and was on their mailing list for when they
had a recent production run. Unfortunately for them, they emailed everyone in
CC so customers who bought the product and didn't have a good experience could
(and did) email everyone else to tell them.

I didn't buy it but from what others wrote it seems they still need to iron
out issues which is not surprising from a new product. I didn't buy because
the price was way too much ($1000). I would want to wait for it to come down
to under $500 before considering buying plus I don't know if it works on
Linux.

Like the OP, I too would like an e-ink monitor for programming and doing most
things that don't need a high refresh rate but it seems the technology is
still at least a few years away.

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f_allwein
Yes, that might be nice to have. The One Laptop Per Child laptop (XO) had a
dual-mode display with a "Reflective (backlight off) monochrome mode for low-
power use in sunlight" [1]. Does not seem to have caught on though. Wasn't the
same, but as far as I remember, it was alright.

I guess the majority of users would not want a greyscale display (or at least
manufacturers think so).

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO)

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alok-g
About me: I have spent nearly a decade researching a display technology
(Qualcomm's mirasol) more capable than E-ink in terms of colors and refresh
speed.

Both an e-ink screen and an emissive display like an LCD is basically sending
light to your eyes. If the brightness, viewing angle, surface reflection,
contrast, etc. match between the two, then one cannot be better than the
other.

The most practical solution at least for now is to use emissive displays with
wide viewing angle, anti-reflective coatings, matte finish, and with
appropriately adjusted brightness, contrast, and also font sizes. All of these
seemingly small factors matter.

Try this experiment: Apply a white background on the emissive screen, and now
put a blank printer paper in the front of half of the screen. If the screen
looks too bright as compared to the paper (good chance it will), you need to
get its brightness down still more!

I cannot find anymore, but there was a post on Hacker News of someone making
an LCD image look indistinguishable from a printed photo in a frame.

~~~
Kluny
Thanks! Can you give any more tips? I'm super interested in anything I can do
to make, for example, my macbook pro (non retina) easier on my eyes. I've got
flux on already, and I'm thinking about using grayscale instead of color.

------
chatmasta
Here's a video from someone who got vim to work on an e-ink display:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0)

~~~
soared
Man that slow refresh rate would kill me.

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id122015
i asked this question many years ago. +1 Count me in. The best thing is to be
proactive and start making the list of people who want such a device. For me
even just the monitor is enough, not need to wait for a full laptop. next time
when they crowdfund a new project we will be ready to act.

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rwallace
Can't you get the same result with off-the-shelf hardware by turning down the
brightness? Like, change the background color in your editor from
(255,255,255) to something dimmer?

~~~
Kluny
Not really, no, but making the screen black and white or grayscale at least
would probably help. Maybe I'll try that.

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vanattab
Does anyone know of a ultra low power lightweight laptop. I am dreaming of
someday working remotely while backpacking and would like a small laptop I
could charge off solar panels.

~~~
drkrieger00
Chromebook is the first thing to pop into my head; small panel, battery and
inverter would be be able to keep one charged no problem. I dunno how small
you can go, but since most chromebook's AC adapters aren't more than 40w,
should be able to find something that would fit in a backpack.

~~~
Kluny
I was thinking about that also, and mentioned it to a friend who has some
experience with them. She said that they're terrific as long as you have
internet access; as soon as you're offline they're holy pain in the ass.

When I'm writing I want to be offline pretty often, either because I've gone
someplace where there's no wifi or because I want to eliminate distractions.
For simple word processing, will a Chromebook make my life difficult if I'm
offline?

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mbrock
You could also research e-ink Android tablets with USB/Bluetooth for the
keyboard. (I looked at some a year ago, but I forgot their names.)

