Hacker News Reader

Comment by epa | Hacker News Reader

A key for when tablets will replace paper is when refresh rates get so fast drawing mimics ink on paper. Until the lag is eliminated it won't be replaced.

View on HN

We're already there.

The reMarkable (by reports) and Onyx BOOX (by direct experience) both satisfy this requirement.

I picked up the BOOX as an e-book reader, not a note-taking device. It turns out that the note-taking functionality is really, really good.

I still have the objection that notes are stuck in an application-specific interface. Though on balance that's not all bad.

There's also the inherent privacy risk of having an electronic rather than physical record.

I haven't used them myself, but I've heard that the Remarkable tablets have pretty good lag.

I'm using a remarkable 2 and the lag when writing is almost non-existent. The thing traditional paper has over the e-ink tablet is the ease of shuffling through notes. Sure, I can tag, and organize, and search through notebooks on my tablet, but shuffling through a stack of paper is much faster, without the friction of using a (sometimes clunky) e-ink ui.

Well said and I agree. Everything most e-ink tablets do you can already do with paper and pencil, more or less. You can search your notes on the tablet, you can search your notes in a paper notebook, and with the paper notebook you can remember things like "it's towards the back, after X". You can manually tag your e-notes, reality automatically tags your physical notes with things like page wrinkles and spilled coffee stains. So, slightly different but ultimately quite similar for most people.

Again, I think spaced repetition is a killer feature that could finally distinguish an e-ink tablet from paper. I think this idea has more potential for improving learning than almost all the multi-million dollar learning websites out there. It can systematically take you to savant levels of recollection in any topic. And right now this tool is locked behind some clunky text focused UI. (Yes, latex and pictures exist, but they suck when compared to drawing on a page.)

It's 21 milliseconds one reviewer said. And remember, it's a refresh happening under the stylus and under your fingers, so it's not comparable to regular screen refresh times.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com