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elnatro
robinsoh
> I would buy this in an instant.
Except, if it did not achieve your expectations. Note the article is short on facts, high on marketing verbiage. If I'm not mistaken this is the same blogger, Alex Soto who previously made a lot of claims and when I challenged him on it, rapidly backtracked. Same guy previously claimed that E-Ink was a patent abuser, and another similarly named guy who headed some kickstarter program claimed E-Ink was suppressing his business and that was why he wasn't able to deliver on previous products, but when I asked him to substantiate it, he changed his blog post.
torgoguys
Yes, that's the same Alex Soto for the link you provided. However, I'm guessing whatever Kickstarter you're talking about is a different guy (I would probably know if Alex had done a Kickstarter because of an online community I'm in).
I've talked with him about e-ink projects before (because I've got a similar project brewing). You previously caught him on the steep upward slope learning about e-ink where he had some incorrect information (e.g., your link), but he always took corrections and has kept at trying to make the e-ink laptop vision happen.
He is a true open-source advocate and while I don't know about Modos beyond the website, I trust he really is hoping to help such a project see the light of day and empower others to be able to make their own e-ink laptops.
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earth_walker
I immediately thought it was a joke myself - besides the picture of the thinkpad with a bolted on e-reader on a messy desk, the laptop name is "Sodom" backwards and the writer's name is an anagram for "A Sex Tool".
Either someone's taking the piss, or terrible at naming things...
JKCalhoun
So many of these marketing-slick web sites show up on HN....
Some guy in his basement that cobbled together a working e-Ink word processor would be much more interesting to me.
johnobrien1010
I'm one of those guys who cobbled something together in my basement.
I'm on my mobile so don't have a picture but will post one later.
One surprising thing to me?
I don't use it. At least, not much in comparison to my actual laptop.
It reminds me of folding keyboards for cell phones. I've bought a couple and thought, these are great, they'll make inputting text on a cell phone so much easier... except I don't end up carrying them around in my pocket, and so end up typing on my mobile phone using the touchscreen just like everyone else.
People think that a distraction free device will allow them to achieve their goals but it is actually the discipline to do the work which will allow them to achieve their goals; the device probably won't change that.
Grumbledour
There have been in few in the last years. Here are two from the top of my head. https://alternativebit.fr/posts/ultimate-writer/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/02/14/the-spudwrite-single-pu...
Also, you might like to check out the pomera https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/digital-memo-pomera-dm3...
reaperducer
Some guy in his basement that cobbled together a working e-Ink word processor would be much more interesting to me
That's exactly what this looks like. It looks like someone glued an e-Ink display into an old ThinkPad T41.
Zoom in on the bezels in the up-close view: https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/61a133075b8ce58a48f1bed1/61e...
The southeast corner looks like there's a battery indicator half-covered up.
It even has a IBM ThinkPad logo and a "T41" in the corner and machine screws holding the screen together.
bluescrn
You could make any PC or laptop into a 'low distraction' device by disconnecting it from the Internet and having a minimum install of only the required productivity software.
It won't free you from the distraction of your other devices though, as you've probably got a fully-online phone within reach.
dredmorbius
There's some truth to your comment, and the one threat you'll never run away from is yourself, but it misses a lot.
I've been using an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi as my daily driver for about a year. It's an e-ink Android tablet, principally intended as an e-book reader (which I use it for), though it also serves quite well for podcasts, web browsing, and general terminal work (Termux / SSH).
If I really want to minimise distractions, I'll disable networking. I can read local content (articles, or my Pocket stash), which is already ample distraction. Or play back downloaded podcasts.
It is far more usable outdoors or under bright lighting than any laptop or tablet, which is itself highly useful.
Battery life is quite good when reading ebooks. This involves disabling Bluetooth, WiFi, and if possible, the Backlight, and avoiding screen repaints. When used for podcasts or browsing, CPU drain is fairly substantial, though I can get well over a day's use per charge typically.
There's no social media or any other apps on the device. My one authenticating app is Pocket.
The UI is not entirely as distraction-free as I'd like, but it is far more so than any other device I've owned in decades.
Lacking colour and high-speed animations is of and by itself a major win on distraction-free status. So, interestingly enough, is the ability to take freehand notes on the device. I'd not anticipated doing that much, it's turned out to be a significant use.
Grumbledour
I got similar feelings as the OP though. It's not just about notifications popping up or having a browser at hand. I feel the epaper display puts me in a different frame of mind. A "Not sitting at the computer" state, in which I think differently. So I always wondered if writing on an epaper display would not feel entirely different than looking at an empty page in a word processor. I certainly feel the difference when reading a book an my ereader vs. my phone/tablet.
Kerrick
I have an IBM Correcting Selectric III for this exact purpose. I do find it helps.
It’s not very portable, though. I just picked up a Sears Citation for that, but the 1960s typewriter definition of portable is much closer to “you can take it on a trip and type in your hotel room” than it is to “you can take it on a hike and type under a tree.”
mackrevinack
any time i read hackernews stuff on my eink i always spend a lot less time reading overall, mainly because its a lot more inconvenient to use. but that's a good thing some times!
mtlmtlmtlmtl
I usually just turn my phone off if I need to focus. If someone /really/ needs to reach me they could always call my workplace. And I avoid phone communication at all cost anyway.
I realise this is not an option for everyone of course. There's also apps that allow you to time lock your phone with exceptions for important things. Protip: set it up so you can get around it by rebooting the phone, in case you forgot to whitelist something, etc. Smartphones are painfully slow to boot anyway, so it still helps discourage the constant distraction if you can muster the will power to not do the reboot. More effort means you consider it rather than reflexively do it.
jolmg
If YouTube, other videos, or fast-moving games is the source of their distraction, then an e-ink monitor would provide a hardware obstacle rather than a pure software one which can more easily be overcome.
yur3i__
Yeah I feel like this kind of thing is a bit of redundant, if you were going to be distracted by looking at HN on your laptop, you probably will do the same on your phone
JKCalhoun
I see plenty of AlphaSmart NEO's on eBay going for roughly $30 to $70. I picked one up a few years back and it is excellent for typing.
Plug it into a computer via USB and it will declare itself a keyboard, and with one keystroke, "type" all your text into your computer.
Very clever.
classichasclass
The best AlphaSmart is still the Dana, though. The closest thing to a PalmOS laptop and everything that makes it an AlphaSmart, too, with the same great keyboard and "typing" feature.
steveylang
The Dana is great, but the regular Alphasmarts are particularly rock-solid and 2 AA batteries will last you over a year.
The Dana touchscreen isn't as contrasty, the backlight eats battery, and if you use up all your batteries you will lose your data without backups. It's all quite manageable of course (since as you say it's just a Palm PDA with a keyboard) and has much more functionality, but not as bulletproof.
(I'm just happy to participate in a Alphasmart discussion LOL.)
m-p-3
Maybe the FreeWrite Traveler is what you're looking for?
https://getfreewrite.com/collections/writing-tools/products/...
jseliger
I hope the latency is better than about two years ago, when I tried one.
alex-a-soto
Hi, elnatro
Thank you for your words and for describing your use case. For writing, I tend to go analog. I use paper and pencil to write a rough draft and get my ideas on paper; the next stage is to type up the thoughts digitally and use a low-tech device like an AlphaSmart Neo, or Pomera DM30. I've found breaking up the writing process into steps and using a dedicated device works for me.
noir_lord
I like https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/ that and since I'm on linux I can silence anything I want to turn off - it works pretty well.
teddyh
Start Emacs (as a graphical window, not in a terminal), maximize it, install darkroom: https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/darkroom.html
na85
May I suggest WriteRoom?
elnatro
Do software solutions can work? I’m not sure, besides I’m sorry but… I haven’t used emacs, would you say it is worthy?
na85
>Do software solutions can work?
Realistically speaking it's your personal discipline and work ethic that's going to make it or break it, whether or not you have a hardware or software solution.
But I think the answer to this is "yes".
>I haven’t used emacs, would you say it is worthy?
Absolutely. Don't fall into the trap of having 4000-line configuration files. Emacs works well out of the box, and you can enable something called "CUA mode" to make the hotkeys for e.g. copy+paste work more like Windows, if that's what you want.
kazinator
Speaking of distraction; why post a photo of an IBM ThinkPad?
frou_dh
Using a typical desktop operating system, but on an eInk screen, is one of those things that sounds cool, but I suspect the reality after using it for a while will be "Never mind, this sucks, because no software (including the OS itself) was designed with working well on sluggish & image-persistence-afflicted panels in mind".
I think doing this concept properly is as much of a software project as a hardware project.
dredmorbius
Unix was originally designed to work on teletypes, which are even slower and higher-latency than e-ink.
Having used an e-ink device heavily for over a year, including both local (Termux) and remote (SSH) system use via it and a keyboard, I'm conveninced that for text-heavy work it's fully functional, and would probably be viable with a sufficiently-thoughtful GUI which adhered to the design principles and respected the imitations of e-ink:
1. Persistence is free.
2. Pixels are cheap
3. Paints are expensive
4. Refreshes are slow
5. Colour is limited to nonexistent.
6. Pagination over scroll.
7. Full refresh (of page or portion) over pan.
8. Reflective rather than emissive.
9. Minimise animation.
10. Line-art or halftones over shade gradients (images).
outworlder
That's essentially older GUI desktops before GPUs did more than just provide an interface for the monitor. Paints used to be very expensive (and remained so for quite a while). Pixel scrolling also took a while to appear on consumer desktops.
dredmorbius
For older computers, the limitation was in the graphics card itself. Monitors could respond limited only by scan and refresh rates, typically 60--120 Hz, possibly better.
For e-ink, it's the electrophoretic display itself which imposes lag. It's a bit like pushing a wet noodle or a heavy arm. No matter how fast the graphics card is responding, the physical display simply can't keep up and iposes inertia on changes.
Again, for text-heavy applications and reasonably static imagery, this isn't much of a problem.
Current displays can cycle between refresh modes, and it's possible to trade image quality for response time. Presently that's only possible for the whole display at a time, but I might imagine it would be possible to zone a display such that a portion is at a high-fidelity mode and another at a lower-fidelity, higher-refresh mode.
If the idea is for a low-distraction device, I'm not sure that's actually the direction you'd want to go in, however.
PMunch
I have some insight in this as I'm currently building a very similar project myself. I'm using off-the-shelf components and the relatively cheap USB driver board for the 10.3" ePaper display is more than capable enough of showing a variety of content. Typing in a document or code is plenty fast, scrolling a webpage is usable, but you'd probably want to use PgUp/PgDown, moving the mouse around is fine but I'm using a tiling window manager to avoid having to drag windows around. I'm able to drive video, but it's quite choppy. In general small updates are plenty fast (like showing characters next to a cursor) and big updates are slow (like full screen video playback). Playing video in a small window is fine if you just want to get some information out of it.
All these speeds are in a dithered 1-bit mode though. As soon as you start playing around with grayscale things starts going slow (you essentially need to display N levels of grayscale as N frames). The system I'm using is capable of updating parts of the display in 1-bit mode and others in "high-fidelity" 16 levels mode. This means that I could e.g. tell it that my picture viewing program should use the full quality mode, and my text editor should use the fast mode. Since I'm using a tiling window manager opening a picture would then use about a second to display the image, but once it's there I could type into a window next to it at full speed. It could also allow me to highlight areas to redraw in high-quality mode if I was browsing a website for example and wanted to watch a particular image.
bee_rider
Greyscale might be nice for syntax highlighting.
I wonder, is there any practical way to do 1-bit just around the cursor?
PMunch
I have looked a little bit into it. The problem is that grey scale requires flashing the area on and off a lot, so it's quite visibly disturbing. My idea was to first draw the character in fast mode, then if it hadn't been touched for a while update it in grey scale mode. I haven't tried implementing this yet, but it might work if the blinking isn't too disruptive. Having syntax highlighting would definitely be nice, other ways of getting it I've though about is getting my editor to use fonts for highlighting instead of color.
kitsunesoba
Well, that's certainly true for the majority of modern software, but the operating systems of yore and the software that ran on them was designed to handle old slow LCDs and restricted color environments quite well.
Mac OS up through System 7.5.5 works excellently on such displays, because it had to run on several models of PowerBook with black and white or grayscale passive matrix displays, which were notoriously slow. While not as good, black and white support remains decent all the way through the end of Classic Mac OS, with version 9.2.1.
For this reason, when imagining an e-ink semi-unitasker laptop such as this I imagine it being built with extremely low power hardware and running old operating systems, such as the aforementioned Classic Mac OS. I'm sure DOS/Win3.1/WinNT could stand in here too, probably more easily since 486/586/Pentium-compatible x86 CPUs are still being manufactured. One wouldn't be able to run Google Docs on such a machine, but there's a veritable cornucopia of abandonware readily available for such platforms at places like Macintosh Garden[0], and given highly specific use case of such a machine I think most people could find something that suits their needs.
hoistbypetard
I used and repaired those in the 1990s. System 7 was usable on those, to be sure, but I don't remember anything about it as "excellent". Everyone thought they kind of sucked. You could see the ghosting even then, and by the end of 1992 or 1993, IIRC, Apple stopped shipping passive matrix displays.
e-ink displays are not even up to that standard of responsiveness yet. And, as you point out, modern software has higher expectations than the systems that kind of sucked on those old passive matrix LCDs.
solarkraft
I use normal Android apps on my R-Reader. With some contrast settings and animations (mostly) turned off it's quite nice. However the animations that are still around (loading spinner, animated GIF) can be quite annoying.
A mouse pointer may itself be a bit hard to display on an E-Ink Screen. It will definitely leave a trail behind.
Vekz
All you need is Emacs and you got a whole operating system designed for reading and editing text in a limited environment.
GekkePrutser
If you work mainly in terminals it will be OK I think. Something like i3 and off you go.
dbtc
The terminal was made for e-ink displays ;)
WesolyKubeczek
Except when scrolling, gods forbid you scroll on an eink screen.
microflash
After years of trying different things, I have come to a conclusion that any variation of technology is not going to help from distractions until and unless you excercise discipline and restraint. Dialing back from the things that distract you can work with any technology. Healthy eating, excercising and sleep can do wonders. Walking away from "digital" world for some time can work too.
coryfklein
> any variation of technology is not going to help from distractions until and unless you excercise discipline and restraint
There's definitely a feedback cycle here though. Swap your dazzling iPhone 14 Pro Max for an iPhone 4S and then change the display to greyscale and see just how fast this technological solution reduces your levels of distraction.
Of course as you say it alone isn't a panacea: doing that is painful. But live with the pain long enough, and you've now used technology as a crutch to change your brain to expect the distraction less.
Here are some other technological solutions that I have found helpful:
* News Feed Eradicator: a browser plugin that hides those algorithmic news feeds that are the cocaine of the internet
* Unhook - Remove YouTube Recommended Videos: removes the sidebar on YouTube
* Podcasts - Even if you "already know" all the psychological tricks the world is pulling on you, your brain is programmable and if you simply listen and re-listen to Tristan Harris on a regular basis this imprints these lessons into your head. That, in turn, provides a well of motivation that can be used when the lure of addiction presents itself.
incanus77
> There's definitely a feedback cycle here though. Swap your dazzling iPhone 14 Pro Max for an iPhone 4S and then change the display to greyscale and see just how fast this technological solution reduces your levels of distraction.
This worked for me. A few years back, I turned down everything (black background, no icons on home screen, no auto-wake on raise) on my iPhone SE (original version) and removed all social and mail apps. I’m still on this phone, both for this and for (small) size reasons.
Other than direct texts from people who need to reach me (which I liberally put into Do Not Disturb from time to time), I don’t get any notifications on my device.
It’s wonderful.
I eventually brought back Mail, mostly because I was using it for address references or communications during things like Craigslist transactions, but I no longer check it unless I’m looking for something in particular.
Along these lines, for all apps I install, I deny notifications by default, then consider (and often, don’t) enabling them for functionality that I need later on.
Though I don’t do as much as I used to (I’ve mixed in many other platforms), I do contract iOS development from time to time. I typically use my (also 5+ year old) iPad Pro for either iPhone/iPad development. When I need actual phone testing, while my SE is a little slow, the bigger problem I run into there more frequently is screen size considerations — even some of Apple’s apps assume you have more screen real estate and cut things off awkwardly.
> Of course as you say it alone isn't a panacea: doing that is painful. But live with the pain long enough, and you've now used technology as a crutch to change your brain to expect the distraction less.
Absolutely — a great way to put it.
dont__panic
I can also attest to removing non-essential apps and using my original iPhone SE in grayscale mode to make it less appealing to distract myself with social media etc.
I don't know what I'll do when this phone dies. I need a modern smartphone for cellular connectivity, messaging applications, photos, and music. But I can't bring myself to buy a giant screen, 6GB+ of RAM, and lose out on features like the headphone jack and my fingerprint reader that serve me well every day.
30944836
I did almost the same as you, particularly with notifications. It made me realize how much of my attention I had given to random apps. Now the default "any app can ping me at any time" just seems insane and stressful.
Loughla
For me, it's like quitting smoking. I couldn't do it cold turkey, it took trying many different things to 'wean' myself off of nicotine.
Technology is the same. I noticed I was getting distracted when I carried a tablet for work. So I replaced it with a remarkable. No more easy distraction = no more distraction.
So for some (especially those of us with addictive personalities), it is about finding supplementary aides to help with that discipline and restraint.
rmellow
Reading on a fully featured tablet with a browser, apps, notifications vs reading on a special purpose device is a world of difference when it comes to attention for me.
tengwar2
I do a lot of writing, but I find that the idea of a distraction free environment doesn't work for me because I need to refer to external material too often. It doesn't matter whether it is for reviewing engineering projects, writing sermons or eulogies for funerals, or doing academic work (I have a bit of an odd lifestyle), I always need to use more than the editor or word-processor. I could see how it might work for a poet, but I'm not that.
If you are one of the people for whom a low-distraction environment works, could you say what sort of stuff you are writing?
paulcole
> If you are one of the people for whom a low-distraction environment works, could you say what sort of stuff you are writing
When I was studying American Lit in college, my laptop died and I replaced it with an AlphaSmart Dana (this would’ve been around 2004). It was like a palm pilot with a long narrow screen and nearly full-size QWERTY keyboard.
I used it for about 2 years and just synced files w/ my roommate’s computer to print. Most of my reference was to external material as well, but in the form of printed books. It was also a great note-taking device in class.
nathias
Philosophy, but I divide the work of research and writing into separate activities. This isn't great from a productivity/quantitative aspect, but it's much better for quality.
nine_k
So, you can honestly say: "Now I've found enough, and whatever questions I may have during the writing I can answer with what I've found"?
That's a... superpower.
jokethrowaway
I rarely (twice a month? I don't remember the last time) search something online when I'm working on something at work (personal projects are the total opposite). We try to limit dependencies because they are security risks and work is basically implementing slightly different services doing more or less the same things with a slightly different architecture.
I'd love to have less eye strain for the worthless time I'm spending in front of a computer in order to make money. I'm worried the refresh rate speed won't be pleasant enough though: typing on my kindle is a pain.
On top of that, a huge portion of my paid time is spent in equally worthless video meetings so I would need some other device, regardless.
nathias
Yes, it helps if you are an expert in the field and have a broad overview and are working on things that aren't popular.
travisporter
I had a related shower thought - is a math phd thesis is just a slow bandwidth transfer out of the brain
e-_pusher
For my distraction-free writing, the solution I found was to buy a 1992 grayscale LCD 386 laptop. I can do writing in Word that I have installed on Windows 3.1 and then open them later on my modern day computer with a floppy disk drive. This setup works great and I can help answer questions if anyone is curious.
I was going to write a blog post about this but I ended up sitting on the draft for too long and forgot about it, I really should publish that post :)
0des
Are you always connected to power? I kept a few old laptops that would be practically useless today, but always wanted to resurrect for simple offline things. The biggest issue I have is power when off the charger.
I think my best laptop is 45 minutes or so per charge. At one point I even bought extra batteries and kept them safely stored and dry, only to realize that this does almost nothing to preserve their longevity as now years later I find them all to have about the same lifespan. I have extra 18650 batteries, however Im not sure, given the size of these, that this is what they use in there.
e-_pusher
Yes the battery is long dead, so I always run it off of wall power. I have though about making a 3D printed modern day battery that is shaped like a NiMh battery of old, but has LiIon batteries inside, gets charged off of USBC, and provides voltage at the same level that the original NiMh would provide. Should be doable, but never got around to it.
the_biot
That sounds like a fun project, but I think you're overthinking how hard this needs to be. Instead of 3D printing an enclosure to fit the laptop, just fill it out with some goop like sugru or something. It just has to not rattle, is all.
For voltage, just get some cheap buck converter board off Ebay, one that you can adjust down to the voltage the laptop needs, and have your battery pack a higher voltage than that. And a Li-Ion BMS board to charge it of course.
0des
That seems pretty complicated, I like it.
voidhorse
I love the look of e-ink but I’ve been skeptical of using it for work ever since trying a few devices with e-ink screens—the latency of an eink screen can be a lot higher if the manufacturer doesn’t get it right, which is fine for some use cases but can be really annoying for others, such as typing.
For those looking for a distraction free, portable writing experience specifically, check out the pomera dm 200. It does not use eink but has a UI that sports a very similar look and feel to eink devices. It’s responsive, extremely portable, and only supports writing text. It’s Japanese, so the UI is in Japanese only, but you can write using English characters.
nitin-pai
The idea has potential.
It will appeal to people who have to do a lot of reading, writing and thinking; and who are currently distracted by a lot of applications and features on their all-purpose devices.
Theoretically, you can turn off the Wi-Fi, put the writing app in focus mode, turn off notifications and avoid googling and looking at email and twitter. In practice, it is nearly impossible to do so. Which is why there are so many focus apps, pomodoro timers etc. It takes a lot of will power to avoid distractions.
Unlike a Kindle this thing can be used to key in text.
It certainly has a niche. What we don’t know is how big that niche is, and whether it will cause others to adopt non-distractive devices.
john-titor
I honestly don't see an added value to such a product. Pushing for minimalism can be nice in a lot of situations, but to me, this seems like it's going a bit too far: The target audience for such a product can't possibly be that large. Visual applications aside, even coding without any syntax highlighting does not sound too great.
eequah9L
A couple years ago I was toying with the idea of using an e-ink display instead of an active one. I wondered about the same thing, how is coding without syntax highlighting?
Not too bad it turns out. You still have bold, italic, underline and gray. You can do an inverse text, which is good for headers (e.g. magit sections). I guess with a GUI editor, you can do things like boxes around tokens etc. -- I'm in an emacs over ssh most of the time, so I haven't looked into that.
I actually ended up liking this and have been using it since then, on a LED display.
dredmorbius
As someone who'd adopted syntax highlighting somewhat grudgingly, it's something I do miss significantly whan it's gone.
That said, working on an e-ink device and doing mostly lightweight scripting occasionally, it's not a showstopper, and greyscale highlighting (which I've not looked into yet) could well work out.
I do remember when monochrome ANSI sequences were all I had on early serial terminals: regular, bold, underline, and reverse video. That's at least four gradations, and with a few greyscale shades, the palette should be usefully broad.
outworlder
> greyscale highlighting (which I've not looked into yet) could well work out.
It works nicely for books. Can't see why it wouldn't work for screens.
chrismorgan
A few years ago, I threw out Molokai and made a deliberately-minimal and high-contrast colour scheme that I named “bland”. For the first two weeks, it was strictly black (#000) on white (#fff), with keywords bold, comments italic, escape sequences in strings bold italic, and things like Rust attributes underlined. I was fairly confident I’d want a little colour, but I wanted to give strict black-and-white a fair trial period before introducing anything further. After this self-imposed moratorium I made strings red, comments green and number literals blue, and have since made a few tweaks (e.g. italics instead of underline for Rust attributes, italics for macro invocations, and orange for things like macro variables), and made a dark variant somewhere along the way, but this is what I use to this day and find to work very well. It’s also what I use on my website, though generally with a slightly grey background rather than white.
Now all this was for monospaced terminal and Vim use. I’d very much like to try it with the ability to use a proportional typeface, and especially in the context of a monospace environment, to experiment with mixing different faces (Triplicate + Equity).
Back to the monochrome thing: I’d like to be able to use grey in most or all of the places where I currently use colour, simply to distinguish them more clearly; it’d be a lighter grey than the luminosity channel of the corresponding colours. Give me that, and monochrome is quite sufficient. But really, even black-and-white was tolerable, though it’d lend significant difficulty for some features line diff highlighting. Certainly full colour is nowhere near as necessary as most imagine (commonly often never having experienced anything else).
diffeomorphism
When discussing external eink screens the comments were that you definitely do get syntax highlighting, just not in color but rather bold, italic, different font etc.
That said, I also think that an eink screen (or tablet with screen) that you can use with any laptop has a much larger audience than having it built in.
JKCalhoun
Interesting. I cded without syntax highlighting for three decades. I think I could go back in an instant as I still haven't got comfortable with modern code editors. Visual Studio Code (as an example) has so much going on that I often can't tell if a word is high-lit because it's in my search field, I have selected it, or some other reason.
undefined
dmos62
> syntax highlighting [on a monochrome eink]
I'm not sure how many tones this eink screen has, but there certainly is a variety of monochrome editor themes. You could make your own if not.
dredmorbius
The Onyx BOOX Max Lumi features 16 greyscale shades, with more available via dithering and/or halftoning, which is mostly tolerable on text, given 220 dpi resolution.
daptaq
Perhaps battery-life?
osener
I would LOVE to have this for working outdoors on a sunny day.
DoingIsLearning
I would much rather see a comeback of those Transflective LCD displays that Pixel Qi made almost 10 years ago.
Here is a demo of the Pixel Qi10 display : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi6DbFyZde8
They had a dual mode so you could have the look/feel of a normal backlight LCD panel but when you wanted to go outside you could toggle to transflective mode.
This means you would have normal refresh rates, color, multimedia, and an actual useful display when outdoors.
Not sure why they ever went bust or what happened to the IP for these displays.
dredmorbius
With frontlighting, e-ink is similarly useful indoors or out. Alternatively, you could have an LED booklight or similar to illuminate the screen.
Refresh rates on e-ink are more than sufficient for text, and suffice for getting a general sense of video, though I wouldn't call that a high-level experience.
Scrolling and similar are a bit rough, though the general solution is to avoid doing that, and instead navigate through pagination --- a full page (or portion) at a time.
vim-guru
This!
dmos62
I'd love to use this for programming, or writing. It being both eink and x86 is pretty unique.
Though there are alternatives I'm looking at, like an android eink tablet with a bluetooth keyboard, which has the advantage of portability.
I'd mostly work through Mosh either way, so the x86 vs arm doesn't matter that much.
t_mann
I'm very happy with my e-Ink tablet, so this sounds like a very interesting project. The main benefit is that it just feels less distractive and addictive. But it's a far more limited UX than LCD/OLED screens, we have to admit that. I can see the laptop form factor being useful for tasks that mainly requires reading/writing text and doesn't depend on fast refresh rates or lots of mouse interactions, eg authors, perhaps some types of research and programming too.
woojoo666
Would be cool if somebody made an E-Ink 2-in-1, like the surface pro
robin_reala
I assume you’re not talking about something like the Lenovo Yoga Book C930? https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/yoga/yoga-2-in-1-series...
woojoo666
Wow that's neat. But I was thinking more along the lines of a E-Ink tablet with a kickstand and detachable keyboard
1-6
Which e-Ink tablet do you have?
IanCal
Different person, but I have a supernote a5x and really love it for writing. It's replaced my "piles of bits of paper" approach. There's a nice way of organising things but I am not strict enough on that.
t_mann
Onyx Boox Note or sth like that, can't remember the exact model name.
HidyBush
Why would I need an underpowered laptop with a laggy e-ink screen and probably a bottom of the barrel keyboard?
First of all it's a terrible reading experience. Why would I want to lug around a whole laptop to read some books? My 10.1" e-ink tablet is already perfect. And if not books, what else would I read, documents? documentation? as per what reason? to _program_ on that device? so it would need to have a complete desktop OS to deploy everything that I need? on such limited hardware?
Secondly it's a terrible writing experience. Not in a million years that keyboard is going to be better than a model M or even a decent mechanical keyboard. Also, again, write what? A book or a scientific paper? ok sure, if you are so dedicated that you are willing to buy a device only for that to bring with you on your travels then please go ahead. Also writing code would be impossible because as I've mentioned you would basically need your whole stack.
Lastly it seems to really not solve the problem it claims to solve. What's the purpose of this device, to have less distractions? Ok, then why couldn't I just write my stuff on a notebook or with a typewriter? If you want purpose and intentionality those are really the ways to do it, not mash your keyboard infinitely at a e-ink laptop. Same goes for reading, if the aim is to make reading slower and more comfortable then just read a good old book. Nothing slower and more distraction-free than being able only to bring one with you at a time because of the size.
Please then, could anybody tell me what they find interesting about this product? Because I really don't get it
capableweb
Here you have some answers to who'd use a laptop like this:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31394866
> A separated device to write my blog or some short stories would be a godsend to me.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31395049
> I'd love to use this for programming, or writing.
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31394890
> I would buy this indeed. I like working outside and it's not very good at the moment.
HidyBush
I already wrote in my comment that at most I can see very motivated writers wanting this device, so your first link is not an answer.
I already wrote in my comment that programming would be impossible unless you literally mean just writing code without actually compiling it and running it and testing it. If you have a stack to take care of, unless you are working with some mind-boggling lightweight stuff, this underpowered hardware would not work, so your second link is not an answer.
Third link is about some genering work that could be done which doesn't really tell me anything, so it's not an answer.
UncleEntity
I used to hack on blender with a mind-boggling underpowered chromebook running fedora. And on a slightly less-boggling desktop box. Then they upped the minimum OpenGL version so I was left behind.
Also would compile pretty much anything I felt like playing around with where the only real limitation was memory…well, and time.
The world would probably be a better place if these “full stack” devs were forced to use underwhelming hardware so you don’t end up with 200mb downloads to view a simple webpage. Just my opinion.
skrebbel
You could've asked these questions without being so dismissive. This is clearly (currently) a single person's passion project, you don't need to come at them so hard.
soapdog
As someone who switches between a Freewrite Traveller and an iPad with external keyboard for my creative writing workflows, let me be the first to say that there is an audience for that.
e-ink is for reading and writing, an underpowered laptop will work just fine for that. Heck, AlphaSmart Danas are doing fine for that and they have Dragonball CPUs at 33mhz.
Do not discount how pleasant it is to split the screen into two regions, have an eBook on one and and editor in the other so that you can write and research at the same time. I've used a 10'' Surface Go for a long time, it was a wonderful little machine. Being underpowered made me proactively conscious of what I was doing with it, which led to more focused work. Still, starting at the LCD for extended periods of time was not fun. I'd love to replicate that kind of setup with this new laptop.
The cult of model M has some truth in it. Yes it is a wonderful keyboard, but guess what, there are other good keyboards out there. They might not be Model Ms or unikey (or whatever the new makers of Model M are), but that doesn't mean they are crap.
You seem to be a developer since your comment is very focused on using this for development, which in my opinion is not where it would shine the most. Still, you could totally use an underpowered e-ink laptop as a development machine if you have an internet connection and leverage cloud services for a ton of stuff. A lot of developers are just pushing stuff to CI/CD pipelines anyway.
You're clearly not in the audience for this, but if you just do a bit of research around how much creative writers love their Freewrites, AlphaSmarts (no e-ink unfortunately), Pomeras, and other distraction free devices, you'd see that maybe some people would find this very appealing.
dmos62
Honestly, your tone is horrible. You seem to be venting and I'd suggest you think about why, for your own sake.
mekkkkkk
Your dismissive tone is almost comical.
I'd personally love to have an e-ink laptop. Currently it's unthinkable for me to be in a beautiful spot in the sunshine while doing some light coding or writing. Seems like this product would make it viable to some extent. I wouldn't expect it to become a daily driver though.
If it were convertible (folding) it would be even better.
samjmck
It's a cool open-hardware and open-source project. What are you so worked up about?
HidyBush
>It's a cool open-hardware and open-source project.
this is very disingenuous. it's a product being developed by a company. this isn't some github repo with a few images of an open source e-ink reader made by some hacker guy, this is a proper thing that is being designed, developed and maybe pushed to the market.
and to me, if you're a company developing a product you should at least make sure its basic existence is justified. nobody has yet told me why this product has any real use.
broodbucket
Isn't that for the market to decide? It's not like they're using public funds for R&D, if people want it they'll pay for it and if they don't they won't.
samjmck
> nobody has yet told me why this product has any real use.
Maybe nobody owes you an answer?
widdershins
There's one reason alone that I'd be interested, but it's a pretty big one: to work outside in the sunshine without a washed-out screen. For this purpose all I'd need is Emacs to run, and I'd be golden.
Being able to work outside would be fantastic for my well-being, and I'd accept quite a lot of compromise to get that.
Lio
I'm unclear, how you feel about this project. :P
Joking aside, I still think this could be an interesting product for a certain small niche of writes that want an easy to read, and to work slowly with a keyboard based experience.
The sort of person that would write using either WordStar or Vi. The sort of person that might still use a typewriter. very niche.
You mention keyboards but that's te thing about them, preference is very subjective.
My self I have an original Made in Scotland Model M and a Cherry Brown Pok3r sitting on a shelf, gather dust.
They're not for me and I don't enjoy using them.
It turns out I find typing on short travel laptop keyboards much more comfortable. I do almost everything via the keyboard so it one of the most important aspects of any computer for me and I choose something different from you.
Different users, different use-cases, different products.
ps I love eInk but this is not probably not for me either but I'm not discounting that it is for someone.
blenderdt
An alternative is an E-ink monitor.
Recently Onyx released a 25" version. But it is expensive, around $1700
robin_reala
Dasung do one as well, presumably with the same panel.
One thing I’m wondering is what’s the power draw of these screens? Ereaders famously sip power, but that’s due to the race-to-zero environment. If you’re running these on a 60fps HDMI connection how do they stack up against LCDs?
abawany
Also the 32" reflective lcd from Sunvision: https://www.sunvisiondisplay.com/product/SVD-32-Color-RLCD-C... . The "My Deep Guide" person has made about 3 hours of video to review it and it seems impressive so far.
itwy
Do they have good support of the monitor needs repair? Any experience?
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I would buy this in an instant.
A separated device to write my blog or some short stories would be a godsend to me. With each year it passes, I feel my concentration vanish more and more. A distraction-free device could help me regain some concentration (I think).