Is anyone aware of a netbook-form device with an e-ink display? I've always felt that'd be my ideal device for writing on-the-go; especially if it'd run vi, nvi or vim.
Not only does it run Android, it has built-in HDMI mode, where you can just connect it to any HDMI port as a second screen. It will act as any regular screen (except it's e-ink of course). This way you don't even need a Termux or bluetooth, or whatever, instead depending on your setup you might just connect it to your PC and run any software you want as on any regular screen. (The screen refresh will be somewhat laggy of course, but they really did a great job in this one, and many regular apps are truly usable.)
I'm typing this on the original Lenovo Yoga Book with 4GB of RAM and it works.
On bootup Win 10 occupies about 2GB of RAM. I'm using Firefox Nightly to view this HN comment and it occupies 500-600 MB of memory, leaving a bit still free.
Yes, 4GB is probably ridiculous for a real laptop. But viewed as a tablet, it (the original Yoga Book) is workable.
Of course, I would love the new Yoga Book to have more memory. Hopefully, Lenovo gets the memo and tries to add more, although that would push the price up.
RAM is only cheap if your consumer can actually run your product. As manufacturer's have decided 4GB is good enough for most people... Maybe the developer is the problem.
"RAMs cheap, everyone should have more than enough."
Platitudes are cheap. Ignoring the real world, and allowing cheap excuses for either developers or manufacturers isn't acceptable.
With 640K, a lot of developers built decent software. They didn't decide that the manufacturer was wrong and so their software would simply be a resource hog, as that was easier for their developers. But they also asked for more too.
I run on 4GB and it's good enough for : browsing, python development of GUI, looking at picture, listening to music, serving music, word processing, making patches to KDE, running a virtual machine, etc. Oh and it's 2018.
I'm not arguing that 4GB is not enough for running a Linux distro (I'm sitting at ~800MB of RAM usage on i3 with qutebrowser, cmus, vim, and more!). But 4GB is not enough to do anything beyond that, especially for developers. It's also almost certainly not enough to do much of anything on the OS it actually ships with (windows 10).
I was one of the people who bought a Remarkable E-Ink device when they first came out. Its great for writing, notetaking and reading PDF documents, eBooks etc. Though its pretty dam expensive, battery life is not great (barely would last a day of simple reading in my experience) and the need to use a pretty muvh rudimentary app to synv stuff (rather than native drive, Dropbox, Google Drive etc) is a big let down.
This Yoga e-Ink option thus looks like a great prospect.
If its an e-ink haptic keyboard, I wonder if its not configurable to whatever degree -- or will it only run one US-Centric keyboard version? I would like to be able to configure the thing in any way... given that you can write on it with a pen, that implies that its 100% touch-surface, so I don't see how you cant just assign whatever touch interface you want to it...
What I would give for a MacBook (or the equivalent) with an e-ink screen. Not some cheap Android semi-computer-tablet, but a full on laptop. No dual screen gimmicks, just a laptop that can be used outside (readable) with the improved battery life from what would be such an awesome screen.
My understanding as to why this may never exist is because there's not much of a market and the refresh rate is too slow. But I can dream.
buy a dasung paperlike pro 3[1] e-ink monitor and place it infront of your laptop screen. Retina display on __E-INK__. slim like a book, just carry it wherever you take your laptop. can double as dual monitor.
The problem with Dasung is that they force you to use a driver, which is a bit buggy and not available for all platforms. But I reckon their hardware is super nice.
Boox Android tablets can take input through standard HDMI, without any software.
Another option is an AMOLED screen, and invert colors to have the majority of the screen switched off. Sadly portable JOLED screens from Asus are not coming out yet, despite being announced for Q2.
Only the first generation needed the special driver, because it connected via USB. The second generation (and newer) use standard HDMI and work fine without drivers. (I tried both since I managed to crack the panel on the first one while travelling.)
There are several reports saying that if you "just" use HDMI and not their special drivers, the display will periodically stop, freeze, and display a message steering you towards the drivers.
If you are looking into that product, you should at least check out the Boox Onyx 10/13 inch e-readers, which are just superior both in terms of price and features. (They too support being used a regular HDMI screen (with no drivers needed, unlike dasung device) - but you also get a fully-fledged android-based e-reader in that same product.
Take it with a grain of salt since it's from Dasung themselves, but they have a demo video showing the relative responsiveness between their display and the Onyx e-readers.
There are many many products that do this. They're all crazy expensive though and they generally use LCD tablets.
The ones we've had at the last two companies I've worked at were battery powered and lasted for a day - somebody has to go around and swap them over once per day.
I agree an e-ink solution would be much better but then these companies would have to do their own hardware since nobody sells e-ink tablets with a proper OS and they're way too niche to do that.
Herman Roebbers talked about this [1] at a conference earlier this year, together with the fact that the displays and what drives them have to be interconnected and low power.
I think this is a great idea! Small (3x6”) e-ink displays are now widely available on alibaba and eBay. I’m very weary about the refresh rate. The ones I see available now look like 6s total refresh by the looks of them.
