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Comment by robgibbons | Hacker News Reader

I would personally pay a lot for an e-paper based laptop specifically for text editing. For writers, or programmers, I don't think you can beat e-paper. No eye-strain, outstanding battery life, perfect visibility in direct sunlight...

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Pixel Qi tried and failed, though you can still buy 3Qi panels (IIRC 7" or 10") from tripuso (who bought the rights when Pixel Qi folded) and swap the display of a corresponding-size notebook.

Nice! I've never heard of those. Pretty expensive for a 10" monitor though, found them on aliexpress/alibaba for ~100$. Adafruit stocks them too for 180$, but with a driver board included.

Weren't those netbook sized?

Likewise. I'd also LOVE something like a cheaper/smaller version of Sony's Digital Paper to replace my notepads/sketchbooks. SIDE NOTE: I keep a Thinkpad x220 with a retrofitted IPS display and a 9cell battery for dedicated writing/programming. It's got fantastic viewing angles, an amazing keyboard and 10hrs+ battery life! You can find great deals for a used x220/x230 (and its IPS display) on ebay. Worth every penny!

I'm actually thinking of buying a cheap hackable ereader with USB OTG support and putting Debian on it, precisely for this purpose.

(It looks like the Nook is probably my best bet, but it unfortunately doesn't have a powered USB port so I'd need to find an external power supply of some description for the keyboard. Any other suggestions gratefully appreciated.)

I'm trying to figure out how to turn my MailStation (320x128 monochrome LCD + keyboard for dial-up email) into a typewriter, but I don't know the easiest way to get the text out of the machine.

https://www.google.com/search?q=earthlink+mailstation&tbm=is...

The AlphaSmart seems to have similar hardware to your MailStation, and has a bit of a cult following as a device for writers. Plus easy text export.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart

I really like writing on my eMate 300. Distraction free (as it does little else) great keyboard, all-day batteries and the word processor is surprisingly fully-featured.

Also guaranteed to cause comment as practically no-one has seen one before.

You may want to try something like what this guy has done:

http://biosrhythm.com/?p=910

The key piece of hardware is the Keyrah:

http://www.vesalia.de/e_keyrahv2.htm

Pretty frustrating lag in typed characters showing up, though.

eInk Carta panels apparently exist in sizes of up to 13.3". I wonder whether it's possible to get them with standard LVDS/eDP connectors to plug into off-the-shelf laptops…

Grab a Kindle and use it as a notepad [1] or as an external screen [2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Notepad/dp/B004LSLN0I

[2] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150434

There is something like that available: http://www.solcomputer.com/sunlight-readable-netbook.html

The specs are modest, but I bet it can handle your one requirement: "text editing".

I believe a $60 used OLPC has the same screen tech, but the keyboard is squishy.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display#Screen

I've always wanted something like this as well. I saw an article a while ago where a guy had a Heroku app (i believe) and pointed his kindle browser to the app and was using it as a word processor. Latency wasn't too bad either.

Poor response time is the main negative.

That's why I think a system aimed solely at text editing would be perfect, basically like a Kindle but in the form factor of a full-size laptop.

I'm imagining literally just a CLI or rudimentary text editor with an e-paper interface... no video or images, just text. Very spartan. Response time is more than good enough for something like that.

Wouldn't it take 250ms between typing a character and it showing up on the screen? That seems kindof annoying.

I could also imagine that searching through a textfile to find the place you want to edit would be pretty frustrating if you had to do it at Kindle speed.

Not necessarily. On the Kindle it takes about that long because it uses greyscale mode, which is slow, and also flashes the screen first to reduce ghosting, which doubles the time.

In 1-bit mono mode you can flip a pixel in ~100ms, which is plenty fast enough for text entry, although scrolling might not be good.

Early LCDs had terrible ghosting (anyone remember trying to play Doom on an early mono LCD and the image instantly turning into incomprehensible hash?), but I can't find any references for actual numbers for the pixel flip time. I'd be interested to know how they compare to eink. Does anyone know?

No idea about the actual numbers, but people have gotten ps1 games working on e-ink displays. I'd think that'd indicate it's probably perfectly doable for text editing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fbD753xE-U

That's really nice (although it is just playing back a video, is not an emulator).

If only the Nook had a powered USB port...

Yea emulation would take more than the cpu on the nook can do, but it really does show that the screen is capable at least. Might never play Crysis but it should be adequate for a lot of thigns.

100ms is about 6.25 frames of a normal 60fps display.

For video or gaming, sure. But for text input?

I will say the market might be too small. But if the market existed slow response times (which are still sub-second) would likely not hurt it too much for that usage.

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