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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

It really is odd to me that there's not a wide range of "general purpose computing e-ink devices" out there, and even odder that this thing is apparently not that either.

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Display cost remains a huge barrier, with little thanks to E-Ink's (the company) control over patents and I'm presuming excusive contracts.

I've some sympathy as hardware is a mug's game and price competition when it does hit is absolutely brutal.

That said, the 10" and 13" displays available now are excellent, and are being found in Android tablets (sold as e-book readers, but fully general-purpose). The Onyx BOOX line for example.

Android itself is hugely limiting in numerous ways. I'd like to see actual e-ink laptops, and suspect we will before too much longer.

A quick note on power use: if the device is only used for reading reasonably static text, battery life is exceptional. Once radios, backlights, and in particular web-surfing are added to the workload, power draw really ramps up. You'll get a full day or two off a charge, but not a week or more as with reading books.

In comparison to the BOOX - I love my Remarkable2 and it is a Linux box under the hood.

I considered the Remarkable.

For my primary use: a portable library, 16 GB onboard storage was simply too little. The BOOX Max Lumi offered 64 GB, and the Lumi II has 128 GB, which I could really use, and ultimately I'd prefer more still.

Remarkable has since shifted to a cloud/subscription business model, which makes me happier for my choice.

I'd prefer Linux under the hood, really. But not with the senseless HW sacrifices that Remarkable are imposing.

I'll add that Onyx's post-purchase support of the platform has been refreshing after Samsung devices that saw no updates at all. There've been about 4--5 in a year and a half, including specifically addressing issues I'd reported.

Also: Whilst it's not the same as native Linux directly available, and the many, many limitations and frustrations of Android still apply, Termux can be installed on the BOOX (via F-Droid), and provides excellent capabilities.

Over 2,200 packages now.

https://termux.com/

My sense is that trying to browse the internet on e-ink kinda sucks, so you're left with devices that you don't browse the web with... and they're competing against tablets, phones, and laptops. It's hard for me to imagine what market you'd have for an consumer e-ink device besides e-readers and word processors.

Browsing on e-ink works quite well.

Better if you're using a browser optimised for the medium. Einkbro is excellent:

https://github.com/plateaukao/browser

Refresh times is probably part of it. And once you start creating special-purpose devices, your market drops off a lot. I guess if I spent a lot of my days reading scientific papers a Remarkable tablet might be interesting but I don't so it isn't. (And, oh, an iPad works pretty well too and I can do a lot of other things with it too.)

Modern e-ink displays can update at about 2 Hz at highest quality and at up to ~8--10 Hz, possibly better, with reduced quality (more ghosting / lower resolution).

If usage is for reasonably static material and navigation tends to be via pagination rather than scroll, it works quite well.

Full video is possible, if of lower quality than on an emissive display.

I've written a set of my own recommendations for e-ink Web and App design here:

https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...

Mostly because it seems no one else had.

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