Depends on what you want to do, and if you can override the clear-screen page blanking. As a benchmark, here's someone running a Playstation 1 emulator on an e-ink Nook:

http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/9877-psx-emul...

Pixel Qi makes some sort of sunlight-readable display for netbooks: http://pixelqi.com/products

I hope these take off, because I also would love to not be staring into a lamp for hours per day.

My first thought was the same - if it performs like the "page flip" on the Kindle, I'd jump off a high building within minutes. But I've no idea if most of that delay is down to the screen or some combination of processing power and/or conserving power.

I was thinking if they did make 20inches e-ink - I would love to have that for my shell only workload. Would be nice for the eyes, light and minimal!

In my experience tinkering around at home with my kindle a year or two ago, the eink display is fast enough that using Vim on it feels about the same as a noticeably slow but still usable ssh session. With a real keyboard attached, it is something that I could see myself using.

Well, quite a few Unix editors might still have the necessary hacks for low-baud terminal connections, which probably help in this case, too.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.