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Comment by _carl_jung | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to see a laptop with an e-ink display I can code on. That way I can go and sit in the sun.

That was always the promise of Pixel Qi screens. Shame they never hit critical mass. There are eink standalone monitors (e.g. http://dasungtech.com/ ) but nothing in a laptop form factor that I’m aware of.

The Dasung's Paperlike monitors are a bit expensive. Onyx Boox Max2 [0] seems a bit more recent, slightly larger, has many more features, including usage as an exterior monitor through HDMI. It's an android-based ereader, with extensive note-taking, drawing, pen writing, music sheet drawing features. It's also cheaper $500+, compared to Paperlike's $900+. I'm not a fan of bloat, which is where Max2 might be leaning, judging by a quick glance, but I'm enticed by it doubling as a large-format (portable) ereader.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdRFMWff5CI

Wow a HDMI input is so great, I've been looking for a tablet with something like that in order to make it double as extra monitor on the go. Tried duet with the iPad but it isn't good enough over lightning with video compression and such.

I was doing this with a Nook HD+ (still a pretty good deal second hand as a 9 inch HD screen if you see one cheap) and TwomonUSB a few years ago. Not the most stable software in the world but it worked well enough as a second screen (hot reloading webpage and terminal stuff on it, code on my main screen)

I really want some e-ink screen setup for a RPi but not sure how it will work.

You can get off the shelf for that easily, but the large modules are $450+$350 (https://shopkits.eink.com/product/concerto-driving-board) and not ideal for a mobile application.

I want an e-ink display on which I can read scientific papers. Sadly, this isn't possible unless the whole paper fits on the screen, because scrolling on e-ink quickly becomes a real chore due to the refresh rate.

What about the Remarkable (https://remarkable.com/)? It's both got a larger screen and it's supposed to have a vastly improved refresh rate. I haven't tried it, but I'm really really curious about it.

It's beautiful hardware matched with absolutely horrid software. It's Android 4.0, which means literally nothing works. They've tried to fix it with custom apps, but I still can't achieve a decent work-flow and there's no community to make it better. It's actually the worst.

I read books with it and it's wonderful.

That is awfully wrong, it boots a custom linux-based OS, not Android. You are probably talking about other device (probably the yotaphone).

http://remarkablewiki.com/tech/specs

I use the remarkable for taking notes on online courses, and works wonders.

Whelp, they marketed it as Android and it had access to the Google Play store, so I thought it was Android...

Seems I was wrong! I still maintain its very poor for reading papers I've found on my phone and then syncing the annotations.

Omg. I got the goodereader.com 13.3 inch confused with the Remarkable ereader. I have no idea how, but here we are...

Sweet, this is my second stupidest comment on this website.

Nothing shameful about making a mistake, happens to the best of us. But you might want to edit your first comment to point out that you were referring to a different device in case people don't make it this far down the comment thread.

I think the edit button ages out and I've missed the window?

Do you have a citation or reference for this? Being stuck on and depending on Android 4 would be a downer but it doesn’t seem to be the case from a cursory look. Or maybe I’m just wishfully hoping it’s not the case.

I have a coworker with one and it seems great and he loves it. I’ve just not rationalized the cost vs benefit to justify buying it personally.

There are e-readers out there big enough for this: the Onyx Boox Max2 and Sony DPT-RP1 (and possibly others). They’re expensive, but if you’re willing to shell out for a dedicated device for this purpose they work well.

In the article's video review they demonstrate showing a pdf nearly full size on the e-ink screen when it's folded over into tablet mode.

It is likely easiest to parse or even semi-manually reformat papers for a smaller screen.

A tool to do that automatically (layout partitioning) would be a nice project idea.

koreader does a really nice job of reflowing PDFs, I use it a lot on a Kindle

Well. Just flip the laptop, enable the on screen keyboard and wait for the screen hack thingy that will enable the use of the e-ink as the main screen to be released on github.

As someone who had a Kobo EReader a long while ago; coding on eink is painful. The screen latency and constantly flashing will ruin your day even with the joy of being able to code in bright daylight. Unless there is some magic advancements in eink latency that I don't know about...

It's not cheap, but there are EInk displays that have low latency:

https://youtu.be/i3wP-GSG1NY?t=242

I've seen hacks on the Nook Simple¹ allowing for even runnig PSX games with good refresh-rate, ever since I saw those demos I've been dreaming about a decent resolution EINK screen for my terminal sessions.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0wAmMbFgI

easy solution: an lcd screen for editing and a e-ink screen for reading

maybe just split the monitor down the middle (open up half your laptop? :-) and drag documents between each for the best [worst?] of both worlds

I wonder why transflective displays are not more common for laptops. My hiking GPS has one and it's really great. The brighter the sun shines, the better you can read it.

My only personal experience with e-ink displays is from my almost decade old Kindle and that was way too slow to be usable interactively for anything complex. Has the state of the art improved to the point that coding on a e-ink display is viable? What about color?

Regarding TFA typing on a flat surface sounds painful, at this point you effectively have a tablet-style keyboard. That being said I'm a keyboard snob who's currently typing on a mechanical keyboard with blank keys so I'm obviously not the target audience.

See my comment about hacked Nooks, they're both really cheap and looks super fast. In general newer e-ink displays can render new content without refreshing the entire screen like in the early days.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17885138

I wouldn't say they're super fast but a $20 Nook Glowlight is an absolute steal if you want to get someone a starter eReader. Load it up with a few books and they're off.

Not too hard to get the kindle store running on it iirc, never bothered though.

My Kindle Voyage has an amazing display and refreshes plenty fast (you can see the partial updates when moving the screen brightness setting up and down quickly). The only problem with it is that the screen is too small (physically). The same quality at 13+" would work great for Emacs + pdf reading.

My thoughts exactly. They replaced the keyboard. They should've replaced the display.

Exactly what I was thinking when I saw this. I just want to attach a tmux/vi session to that EINK panel, I'll even bring my own wireless keyboard.

Same here. I’m sure plenty want that, but apparently not enough.

Yep, same here. E-ink screen and keyboard is all I need; I'd be totally fine with black&white, I'd just switch Emacs to monochrome coloring (using different fonts and bolds/italics/underlines instead of regular syntax coloring).

Personally I wish the reflecting shiny screen would go away. Why in the world did that become standard?

I came here to say the same thing. I might have to make it myself which is looking increasingly possible. Useful displays aren't even that expensive, a 13.3" 1600x1200 display _module_ (not including driver) is $450, making a mechanical keyboard is easy, SBCs like the ODROID XU4 are plenty fast. Just a small matter of finding a few months of spare time /s

Would you be losing syntax highlighting though?

> Would you be losing syntax highlighting though?

Grayscale, italics, bold

V A R I A B L E S

There are colour eink displays!

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