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My understanding is that the big issue is that e-Ink displays have a miserably slow pixel update time. The new Kindle Paperwhite is on the order of 450ms whereas the average LCD display is in the single digit ms range. Great for static text, but horrid for anything real-time.

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I should have mentioned that I'd be using text-mode mostly. With my keyboard refresh rate (25key/sec) => 40ms max per redraw. That's .. quite far. If you look at this old kindle refresh rate, used as a terminal screen for a raspberry pi, it's almost usable : http://www.ponnuki.net/2012/09/kindleberry-pi/

I wonder how it would be on a newer eink screen.

Another video: vim on eink

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0

not glorious.

This would still be far better than ancient 300 baud terminals. I bet some Unix editors still have the hacks in them to speed up operation over slow connections…

Although I don't know how well contemporary eInk displays would handle partial updates. If it e.g. doesn't save much energy compared to a full-screen refresh, there might be huge difference in battery usage, as even slower typists would cause more redraw than the page flips caused by your average reader.

Based on crappy youtube videos it seems eink screens support partial redraw.

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