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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

I'm eager to see 100% (not dual-screen like Lenovo) eInk laptops and eInk-optimized GUIs to come.

I'm thrilled to imagine how much neural energy (sounds stupid, I know, but I hope many understand what I mean) could it save me if I my working display (where I mostly work with eMail, text documents and some code, never really needed anything colorful or dynamic at work) was an eInk and I was only presented the very information I need (rather than tons of bullshit visual effects modern GUIs consist of).

There seem to be an emerging trend to "digital minimalism", perhaps it could drive the sales.

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"and I was only presented the very information I need (rather than tons of bullshit visual effects modern GUIs consist of)."

You're implying that visual effects cost mental energy. I disagree - a major point of the visual effects is to provide confirmation for the thing you've done, and reduce confusion if you mis-tap or something unexpected happens, by having an indicator that sticks around for the second or two it takes for your brain to catch up and re-view the screen.

I am with you on this one, but the technological hurdle is going to be refresh rates and finding better ways to tackle ghosting. When I talk about refreshing the refresh rates, I mean it should be possible to pan a schematic in a reasonable manner. When I talk about tackling ghosting, I mean it should be possible to remove or reduce it without flashing the entire screen. Designing user interfaces specific to the technology helps, but it can only go so far.

I would love to see an eink monitor that doesn't break the bank. It would be great to have it for showing hw spec sheets and protocol docs for reference while I'm coding.

I just want an e-ink display the same size as a standard A4 paper sheet.

To read pdfs.

I gave up on most articles being distributed in a format that can be re-displayed on demand with different aspect ratio and pixel density.

I'm also looking forward to using an eInk display for work, but I'm not quite as optimistic as you are for minimalism. As the technology improves we're going to see higher and higher framerates, and eventually color eInk will be affordable.

IMO it's much more likely that we'll end up with the same visually overloaded GUIs, just running on a color, 60fps eInk display than having the whole industry return to static black and white.

Why use eInk then?

Valid question. eInk is draws much lower power than competitors and excels for sunlight readable displays. It also has superior contrast, improving readability.

> As the technology improves

It can't improve unless you change the underlying physics. Electrophoretic displays like E Ink's use particles in a solvent. They can't move fast because fast moving particles are not going to be stay in a stable position. Have a look at those displays from 2008 and compare it to 2020. The quality of the display has changed, contrast is better, but timing is still about half a second. Modes like A2 which is used by Dasung are just hacks that tradeoff speed for stability and perhaps even panel life / reliability.

The startups doing fast displays typically use a different underlying physics. But no one wants to invest the necessary billions in them so they keep dying out like Liquavista, Mirasol and many others.

It would be much better for the health of your eyes too. I'm still looking for consumer ready desktop monitors that I don't have to order through AliBaba

EDIT https://www.tomshardware.com/news/25-inch-eink-monitor-comin...

https://www.amazon.com/Dasung-Paperlike-Front-Light-Touch-Mo...

The second these become available at a reasonable price, I am buying one. I suffer from chronic migraines and the difference in the way that I feel on days I have to look at a monitor all day (workdays) vs the days I don't is very large. On the weekends/evenings I read on an old gen 2 kindle and it doesn't cause any discomfort at all.

If it's that bad, the current price is reasonable. I'd just make sure you list it as a working expense on your taxes.

Do you wear LED blocking glasses?

I do indeed! They help quite a bit. I'll have to look into that, thanks for the suggestion.

Maybe get a doctor's note too. It will help offset the cost if it's treated as something medically needed.

That's a good idea. If I'm formally diagnosed with computer vision syndrome or something similar, I bet I could use a fsa card to buy it.

Slow display is actually frustrating for text input. E Ink is not suited to UI display for that reason.

If there's enough demand, they'll fix this. Especially after the patents run out.

This ignores the cost of missed opportunity: investing any amount of time and money on something else is almost certainly going to generate higher RoI than trying to make fast, responsive eink displays work.

It's almost never about whether a company can do something, but about whether they leave money on the table by not doing something else.

> Especially after the patents run out.

I see this mistaken assumption repeated everywhere by people unfamiliar with the display technology industry. You can attend display conferences and see lots of startups trying to make stable displays. The limitation is not patents. You can ask a simple question to prove this to yourself. Which E Ink patent is blocking progress and will suddenly cause the industry to become amazing after the patent runs out? At best, you'll get lazy answers like ALL of E Ink's patents.

That's not a lazy answer, "patent thickets" are a thing:

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

It is when it is not applicable to the topic being discussed.

People said the same thing about 3d printing, and as soon as the FDM patents expired in 2009 the field exploded.

Isn't that a Trumpism? "People said". I noticed nobody answered the simple question of which patent is blocking progress.

Not everything Trump might have said is a "Trumpism". As for the statement "people said", it's absolutely fair to point out that your argument has been incorrectly stated in the past in very similar circumstances.

And you can look up e-ink's dozen or so patents that still have about half of their lifetime left. They're pretty fundamental to the technology. I personally try not to patent bomb here on HN so I don't push someone into willful infringement.

I don't see a concrete answer to the simple question of which patent it is that is blocking the industry. Is that question somehow illegitimate?

There’s a perfect alternative to E Ink for laptops called Liquid Crystal Display(LCD)

Good point, it has many of the same advantages: low power, sunlight readability. Why isn't it used more often? The OLPC had a dual LCD/LED display (PixelQi) and it worked very well.

RLCD is starting to pick up in some niches in China (e.g., the Hisense Q5). Its main disadvantage is that it tends to have a color cast depending on the nature of the ambient light, which e-ink doesn't, but it is cheaper and has higher refresh rates.

Glad to hear RLCD is finding a niche between e-ink and other displays, thanks for the recommendation.

Unfortunately that would require tons of work on the UI and a big rethinking of the dumpster fire known as web.

I suggest gopher.

Yeah. Gopher, Gemini or something slightly more sophisticated. In fact HTTP/HTML/CSS are OK if you use them the right way.

Good! These already beg for the rethinking.

Really? More silent downvotes? Did I touch a sore spot?

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