A separated device to write my blog or some short stories would be a godsend to me. With each year it passes, I feel my concentration vanish more and more. A distraction-free device could help me regain some concentration (I think).
Except, if it did not achieve your expectations. Note the article is short on facts, high on marketing verbiage. If I'm not mistaken this is the same blogger, Alex Soto who previously made a lot of claims and when I challenged him on it, rapidly backtracked. Same guy previously claimed that E-Ink was a patent abuser, and another similarly named guy who headed some kickstarter program claimed E-Ink was suppressing his business and that was why he wasn't able to deliver on previous products, but when I asked him to substantiate it, he changed his blog post.
Yes, that's the same Alex Soto for the link you provided. However, I'm guessing whatever Kickstarter you're talking about is a different guy (I would probably know if Alex had done a Kickstarter because of an online community I'm in).
I've talked with him about e-ink projects before (because I've got a similar project brewing). You previously caught him on the steep upward slope learning about e-ink where he had some incorrect information (e.g., your link), but he always took corrections and has kept at trying to make the e-ink laptop vision happen.
He is a true open-source advocate and while I don't know about Modos beyond the website, I trust he really is hoping to help such a project see the light of day and empower others to be able to make their own e-ink laptops.
I immediately thought it was a joke myself - besides the picture of the thinkpad with a bolted on e-reader on a messy desk, the laptop name is "Sodom" backwards and the writer's name is an anagram for "A Sex Tool".
Either someone's taking the piss, or terrible at naming things...
I'm one of those guys who cobbled something together in my basement.
I'm on my mobile so don't have a picture but will post one later.
One surprising thing to me?
I don't use it. At least, not much in comparison to my actual laptop.
It reminds me of folding keyboards for cell phones. I've bought a couple and thought, these are great, they'll make inputting text on a cell phone so much easier... except I don't end up carrying them around in my pocket, and so end up typing on my mobile phone using the touchscreen just like everyone else.
People think that a distraction free device will allow them to achieve their goals but it is actually the discipline to do the work which will allow them to achieve their goals; the device probably won't change that.
Exactly. I’ve tried quite a few “distraction free” solutions. The problem isn’t finding the right device, it’s finding the willpower to force yourself to write even when you’re coming up empty.
Requires a largish 3d printer (which I happen to have, one of the advantages of co-owning a makerspace:https://revolutionmakerspace.com/) or ordering a 3d print online.
You could make any PC or laptop into a 'low distraction' device by disconnecting it from the Internet and having a minimum install of only the required productivity software.
It won't free you from the distraction of your other devices though, as you've probably got a fully-online phone within reach.
There's some truth to your comment, and the one threat you'll never run away from is yourself, but it misses a lot.
I've been using an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi as my daily driver for about a year. It's an e-ink Android tablet, principally intended as an e-book reader (which I use it for), though it also serves quite well for podcasts, web browsing, and general terminal work (Termux / SSH).
If I really want to minimise distractions, I'll disable networking. I can read local content (articles, or my Pocket stash), which is already ample distraction. Or play back downloaded podcasts.
It is far more usable outdoors or under bright lighting than any laptop or tablet, which is itself highly useful.
Battery life is quite good when reading ebooks. This involves disabling Bluetooth, WiFi, and if possible, the Backlight, and avoiding screen repaints. When used for podcasts or browsing, CPU drain is fairly substantial, though I can get well over a day's use per charge typically.
There's no social media or any other apps on the device. My one authenticating app is Pocket.
The UI is not entirely as distraction-free as I'd like, but it is far more so than any other device I've owned in decades.
Lacking colour and high-speed animations is of and by itself a major win on distraction-free status. So, interestingly enough, is the ability to take freehand notes on the device. I'd not anticipated doing that much, it's turned out to be a significant use.
I got similar feelings as the OP though. It's not just about notifications popping up or having a browser at hand. I feel the epaper display puts me in a different frame of mind. A "Not sitting at the computer" state, in which I think differently. So I always wondered if writing on an epaper display would not feel entirely different than looking at an empty page in a word processor. I certainly feel the difference when reading a book an my ereader vs. my phone/tablet.
I have an IBM Correcting Selectric III for this exact purpose. I do find it helps.
It’s not very portable, though. I just picked up a Sears Citation for that, but the 1960s typewriter definition of portable is much closer to “you can take it on a trip and type in your hotel room” than it is to “you can take it on a hike and type under a tree.”
I also have a Correcting Selectric III and to say that it's not very portable is as much an understatement as saying a boat anchor is not very slim or lightweight!
For actually portable typewriters I've really enjoyed my Royal Mercury and Smith-Corona Skyriter, both of which are usable on a lap on a bench (or under a tree).
any time i read hackernews stuff on my eink i always spend a lot less time reading overall, mainly because its a lot more inconvenient to use. but that's a good thing some times!
I usually just turn my phone off if I need to focus. If someone /really/ needs to reach me they could always call my workplace. And I avoid phone communication at all cost anyway.
I realise this is not an option for everyone of course. There's also apps that allow you to time lock your phone with exceptions for important things. Protip: set it up so you can get around it by rebooting the phone, in case you forgot to whitelist something, etc. Smartphones are painfully slow to boot anyway, so it still helps discourage the constant distraction if you can muster the will power to not do the reboot. More effort means you consider it rather than reflexively do it.
If YouTube, other videos, or fast-moving games is the source of their distraction, then an e-ink monitor would provide a hardware obstacle rather than a pure software one which can more easily be overcome.
Yeah I feel like this kind of thing is a bit of redundant, if you were going to be distracted by looking at HN on your laptop, you probably will do the same on your phone
The best AlphaSmart is still the Dana, though. The closest thing to a PalmOS laptop and everything that makes it an AlphaSmart, too, with the same great keyboard and "typing" feature.
The Dana is great, but the regular Alphasmarts are particularly rock-solid and 2 AA batteries will last you over a year.
The Dana touchscreen isn't as contrasty, the backlight eats battery, and if you use up all your batteries you will lose your data without backups. It's all quite manageable of course (since as you say it's just a Palm PDA with a keyboard) and has much more functionality, but not as bulletproof.
(I'm just happy to participate in a Alphasmart discussion LOL.)
Thank you for your words and for describing your use case. For writing, I tend to go analog. I use paper and pencil to write a rough draft and get my ideas on paper; the next stage is to type up the thoughts digitally and use a low-tech device like an AlphaSmart Neo, or Pomera DM30. I've found breaking up the writing process into steps and using a dedicated device works for me.
Realistically speaking it's your personal discipline and work ethic that's going to make it or break it, whether or not you have a hardware or software solution.
But I think the answer to this is "yes".
>I haven’t used emacs, would you say it is worthy?
Absolutely. Don't fall into the trap of having 4000-line configuration files. Emacs works well out of the box, and you can enable something called "CUA mode" to make the hotkeys for e.g. copy+paste work more like Windows, if that's what you want.
Using a typical desktop operating system, but on an eInk screen, is one of those things that sounds cool, but I suspect the reality after using it for a while will be "Never mind, this sucks, because no software (including the OS itself) was designed with working well on sluggish & image-persistence-afflicted panels in mind".
I think doing this concept properly is as much of a software project as a hardware project.
Unix was originally designed to work on teletypes, which are even slower and higher-latency than e-ink.
Having used an e-ink device heavily for over a year, including both local (Termux) and remote (SSH) system use via it and a keyboard, I'm conveninced that for text-heavy work it's fully functional, and would probably be viable with a sufficiently-thoughtful GUI which adhered to the design principles and respected the imitations of e-ink:
1. Persistence is free.
2. Pixels are cheap
3. Paints are expensive
4. Refreshes are slow
5. Colour is limited to nonexistent.
6. Pagination over scroll.
7. Full refresh (of page or portion) over pan.
8. Reflective rather than emissive.
9. Minimise animation.
10. Line-art or halftones over shade gradients (images).
That's essentially older GUI desktops before GPUs did more than just provide an interface for the monitor. Paints used to be very expensive (and remained so for quite a while). Pixel scrolling also took a while to appear on consumer desktops.
For older computers, the limitation was in the graphics card itself. Monitors could respond limited only by scan and refresh rates, typically 60--120 Hz, possibly better.
For e-ink, it's the electrophoretic display itself which imposes lag. It's a bit like pushing a wet noodle or a heavy arm. No matter how fast the graphics card is responding, the physical display simply can't keep up and iposes inertia on changes.
Again, for text-heavy applications and reasonably static imagery, this isn't much of a problem.
Current displays can cycle between refresh modes, and it's possible to trade image quality for response time. Presently that's only possible for the whole display at a time, but I might imagine it would be possible to zone a display such that a portion is at a high-fidelity mode and another at a lower-fidelity, higher-refresh mode.
If the idea is for a low-distraction device, I'm not sure that's actually the direction you'd want to go in, however.
> For older computers, the limitation was in the graphics card itself. Monitors could respond limited only by scan and refresh rates, typically 60--120 Hz, possibly better.
If we go really old, we start getting into really slooooow phospors. It would take multiple seconds for a blinking cursor to fade.
The discussion above was of the 1990s. Displays were graphical and bitmapped, not text. I remember when dragging and resizing windows with contents visible became A Thing.
And yes, I used computers in the phosphor age. And just a tad during the teletype period. I don't think either applies, though e-ink does have some characteristics of phosphors in terms over overall response rate.
The main distinction though is that phosphors painted in a line, not a full-screen refresh (though it might be interesting to see just how e-ink does refresh in super-slow motion), and then decays.
For e-ink, the characteristic is that higher-quality refreshes take longer, and that a full flush (blacking then blanking the full screen) creates a marked flash. It's much better on recent high-end displays than on, say, a ten-year-old Kindle. But there's still some of the effect visible.
Much less a problem when paging, or when there's a single cursor-point-of-change when typing text. More a problem with complex dynamic displays.
I have some insight in this as I'm currently building a very similar project myself. I'm using off-the-shelf components and the relatively cheap USB driver board for the 10.3" ePaper display is more than capable enough of showing a variety of content. Typing in a document or code is plenty fast, scrolling a webpage is usable, but you'd probably want to use PgUp/PgDown, moving the mouse around is fine but I'm using a tiling window manager to avoid having to drag windows around. I'm able to drive video, but it's quite choppy. In general small updates are plenty fast (like showing characters next to a cursor) and big updates are slow (like full screen video playback). Playing video in a small window is fine if you just want to get some information out of it.
All these speeds are in a dithered 1-bit mode though. As soon as you start playing around with grayscale things starts going slow (you essentially need to display N levels of grayscale as N frames). The system I'm using is capable of updating parts of the display in 1-bit mode and others in "high-fidelity" 16 levels mode. This means that I could e.g. tell it that my picture viewing program should use the full quality mode, and my text editor should use the fast mode. Since I'm using a tiling window manager opening a picture would then use about a second to display the image, but once it's there I could type into a window next to it at full speed. It could also allow me to highlight areas to redraw in high-quality mode if I was browsing a website for example and wanted to watch a particular image.
I have looked a little bit into it. The problem is that grey scale requires flashing the area on and off a lot, so it's quite visibly disturbing. My idea was to first draw the character in fast mode, then if it hadn't been touched for a while update it in grey scale mode. I haven't tried implementing this yet, but it might work if the blinking isn't too disruptive. Having syntax highlighting would definitely be nice, other ways of getting it I've though about is getting my editor to use fonts for highlighting instead of color.
Well, that's certainly true for the majority of modern software, but the operating systems of yore and the software that ran on them was designed to handle old slow LCDs and restricted color environments quite well.
Mac OS up through System 7.5.5 works excellently on such displays, because it had to run on several models of PowerBook with black and white or grayscale passive matrix displays, which were notoriously slow. While not as good, black and white support remains decent all the way through the end of Classic Mac OS, with version 9.2.1.
For this reason, when imagining an e-ink semi-unitasker laptop such as this I imagine it being built with extremely low power hardware and running old operating systems, such as the aforementioned Classic Mac OS. I'm sure DOS/Win3.1/WinNT could stand in here too, probably more easily since 486/586/Pentium-compatible x86 CPUs are still being manufactured. One wouldn't be able to run Google Docs on such a machine, but there's a veritable cornucopia of abandonware readily available for such platforms at places like Macintosh Garden[0], and given highly specific use case of such a machine I think most people could find something that suits their needs.
I used and repaired those in the 1990s. System 7 was usable on those, to be sure, but I don't remember anything about it as "excellent". Everyone thought they kind of sucked. You could see the ghosting even then, and by the end of 1992 or 1993, IIRC, Apple stopped shipping passive matrix displays.
e-ink displays are not even up to that standard of responsiveness yet. And, as you point out, modern software has higher expectations than the systems that kind of sucked on those old passive matrix LCDs.
I use normal Android apps on my R-Reader. With some contrast settings and animations (mostly) turned off it's quite nice. However the animations that are still around (loading spinner, animated GIF) can be quite annoying.
A mouse pointer may itself be a bit hard to display on an E-Ink Screen. It will definitely leave a trail behind.
After years of trying different things, I have come to a conclusion that any variation of technology is not going to help from distractions until and unless you excercise discipline and restraint. Dialing back from the things that distract you can work with any technology. Healthy eating, excercising and sleep can do wonders. Walking away from "digital" world for some time can work too.
> any variation of technology is not going to help from distractions until and unless you excercise discipline and restraint
There's definitely a feedback cycle here though. Swap your dazzling iPhone 14 Pro Max for an iPhone 4S and then change the display to greyscale and see just how fast this technological solution reduces your levels of distraction.
Of course as you say it alone isn't a panacea: doing that is painful. But live with the pain long enough, and you've now used technology as a crutch to change your brain to expect the distraction less.
Here are some other technological solutions that I have found helpful:
* News Feed Eradicator: a browser plugin that hides those algorithmic news feeds that are the cocaine of the internet
* Unhook - Remove YouTube Recommended Videos: removes the sidebar on YouTube
* Podcasts - Even if you "already know" all the psychological tricks the world is pulling on you, your brain is programmable and if you simply listen and re-listen to Tristan Harris on a regular basis this imprints these lessons into your head. That, in turn, provides a well of motivation that can be used when the lure of addiction presents itself.
> There's definitely a feedback cycle here though. Swap your dazzling iPhone 14 Pro Max for an iPhone 4S and then change the display to greyscale and see just how fast this technological solution reduces your levels of distraction.
This worked for me. A few years back, I turned down everything (black background, no icons on home screen, no auto-wake on raise) on my iPhone SE (original version) and removed all social and mail apps. I’m still on this phone, both for this and for (small) size reasons.
Other than direct texts from people who need to reach me (which I liberally put into Do Not Disturb from time to time), I don’t get any notifications on my device.
It’s wonderful.
I eventually brought back Mail, mostly because I was using it for address references or communications during things like Craigslist transactions, but I no longer check it unless I’m looking for something in particular.
Along these lines, for all apps I install, I deny notifications by default, then consider (and often, don’t) enabling them for functionality that I need later on.
Though I don’t do as much as I used to (I’ve mixed in many other platforms), I do contract iOS development from time to time. I typically use my (also 5+ year old) iPad Pro for either iPhone/iPad development. When I need actual phone testing, while my SE is a little slow, the bigger problem I run into there more frequently is screen size considerations — even some of Apple’s apps assume you have more screen real estate and cut things off awkwardly.
> Of course as you say it alone isn't a panacea: doing that is painful. But live with the pain long enough, and you've now used technology as a crutch to change your brain to expect the distraction less.
I can also attest to removing non-essential apps and using my original iPhone SE in grayscale mode to make it less appealing to distract myself with social media etc.
I don't know what I'll do when this phone dies. I need a modern smartphone for cellular connectivity, messaging applications, photos, and music. But I can't bring myself to buy a giant screen, 6GB+ of RAM, and lose out on features like the headphone jack and my fingerprint reader that serve me well every day.
I did almost the same as you, particularly with notifications. It made me realize how much of my attention I had given to random apps. Now the default "any app can ping me at any time" just seems insane and stressful.
For me, it's like quitting smoking. I couldn't do it cold turkey, it took trying many different things to 'wean' myself off of nicotine.
Technology is the same. I noticed I was getting distracted when I carried a tablet for work. So I replaced it with a remarkable. No more easy distraction = no more distraction.
So for some (especially those of us with addictive personalities), it is about finding supplementary aides to help with that discipline and restraint.
Reading on a fully featured tablet with a browser, apps, notifications vs reading on a special purpose device is a world of difference when it comes to attention for me.
I do a lot of writing, but I find that the idea of a distraction free environment doesn't work for me because I need to refer to external material too often. It doesn't matter whether it is for reviewing engineering projects, writing sermons or eulogies for funerals, or doing academic work (I have a bit of an odd lifestyle), I always need to use more than the editor or word-processor. I could see how it might work for a poet, but I'm not that.
If you are one of the people for whom a low-distraction environment works, could you say what sort of stuff you are writing?
> If you are one of the people for whom a low-distraction environment works, could you say what sort of stuff you are writing
When I was studying American Lit in college, my laptop died and I replaced it with an AlphaSmart Dana (this would’ve been around 2004). It was like a palm pilot with a long narrow screen and nearly full-size QWERTY keyboard.
I used it for about 2 years and just synced files w/ my roommate’s computer to print. Most of my reference was to external material as well, but in the form of printed books. It was also a great note-taking device in class.
Philosophy, but I divide the work of research and writing into separate activities. This isn't great from a productivity/quantitative aspect, but it's much better for quality.
I rarely (twice a month? I don't remember the last time) search something online when I'm working on something at work (personal projects are the total opposite).
We try to limit dependencies because they are security risks and work is basically implementing slightly different services doing more or less the same things with a slightly different architecture.
I'd love to have less eye strain for the worthless time I'm spending in front of a computer in order to make money.
I'm worried the refresh rate speed won't be pleasant enough though: typing on my kindle is a pain.
On top of that, a huge portion of my paid time is spent in equally worthless video meetings so I would need some other device, regardless.
For my distraction-free writing, the solution I found was to buy a 1992 grayscale LCD 386 laptop. I can do writing in Word that I have installed on Windows 3.1 and then open them later on my modern day computer with a floppy disk drive. This setup works great and I can help answer questions if anyone is curious.
I was going to write a blog post about this but I ended up sitting on the draft for too long and forgot about it, I really should publish that post :)
Are you always connected to power? I kept a few old laptops that would be practically useless today, but always wanted to resurrect for simple offline things. The biggest issue I have is power when off the charger.
I think my best laptop is 45 minutes or so per charge. At one point I even bought extra batteries and kept them safely stored and dry, only to realize that this does almost nothing to preserve their longevity as now years later I find them all to have about the same lifespan. I have extra 18650 batteries, however Im not sure, given the size of these, that this is what they use in there.
Yes the battery is long dead, so I always run it off of wall power. I have though about making a 3D printed modern day battery that is shaped like a NiMh battery of old, but has LiIon batteries inside, gets charged off of USBC, and provides voltage at the same level that the original NiMh would provide. Should be doable, but never got around to it.
That sounds like a fun project, but I think you're overthinking how hard this needs to be. Instead of 3D printing an enclosure to fit the laptop, just fill it out with some goop like sugru or something. It just has to not rattle, is all.
For voltage, just get some cheap buck converter board off Ebay, one that you can adjust down to the voltage the laptop needs, and have your battery pack a higher voltage than that. And a Li-Ion BMS board to charge it of course.
I love the look of e-ink but I’ve been skeptical of using it for work ever since trying a few devices with e-ink screens—the latency of an eink screen can be a lot higher if the manufacturer doesn’t get it right, which is fine for some use cases but can be really annoying for others, such as typing.
For those looking for a distraction free, portable writing experience specifically, check out the pomera dm 200. It does not use eink but has a UI that sports a very similar look and feel to eink devices. It’s responsive, extremely portable, and only supports writing text. It’s Japanese, so the UI is in Japanese only, but you can write using English characters.
It will appeal to people who have to do a lot of reading, writing and thinking; and who are currently distracted by a lot of applications and features on their all-purpose devices.
Theoretically, you can turn off the Wi-Fi, put the writing app in focus mode, turn off notifications and avoid googling and looking at email and twitter. In practice, it is nearly impossible to do so. Which is why there are so many focus apps, pomodoro timers etc. It takes a lot of will power to avoid distractions.
Unlike a Kindle this thing can be used to key in text.
It certainly has a niche. What we don’t know is how big that niche is, and whether it will cause others to adopt non-distractive devices.
I honestly don't see an added value to such a product. Pushing for minimalism can be nice in a lot of situations, but to me, this seems like it's going a bit too far: The target audience for such a product can't possibly be that large. Visual applications aside, even coding without any syntax highlighting does not sound too great.
A couple years ago I was toying with the idea of using an e-ink display instead of an active one. I wondered about the same thing, how is coding without syntax highlighting?
Not too bad it turns out. You still have bold, italic, underline and gray. You can do an inverse text, which is good for headers (e.g. magit sections). I guess with a GUI editor, you can do things like boxes around tokens etc. -- I'm in an emacs over ssh most of the time, so I haven't looked into that.
I actually ended up liking this and have been using it since then, on a LED display.
As someone who'd adopted syntax highlighting somewhat grudgingly, it's something I do miss significantly whan it's gone.
That said, working on an e-ink device and doing mostly lightweight scripting occasionally, it's not a showstopper, and greyscale highlighting (which I've not looked into yet) could well work out.
I do remember when monochrome ANSI sequences were all I had on early serial terminals: regular, bold, underline, and reverse video. That's at least four gradations, and with a few greyscale shades, the palette should be usefully broad.
A few years ago, I threw out Molokai and made a deliberately-minimal and high-contrast colour scheme that I named “bland”. For the first two weeks, it was strictly black (#000) on white (#fff), with keywords bold, comments italic, escape sequences in strings bold italic, and things like Rust attributes underlined. I was fairly confident I’d want a little colour, but I wanted to give strict black-and-white a fair trial period before introducing anything further. After this self-imposed moratorium I made strings red, comments green and number literals blue, and have since made a few tweaks (e.g. italics instead of underline for Rust attributes, italics for macro invocations, and orange for things like macro variables), and made a dark variant somewhere along the way, but this is what I use to this day and find to work very well. It’s also what I use on my website, though generally with a slightly grey background rather than white.
Now all this was for monospaced terminal and Vim use. I’d very much like to try it with the ability to use a proportional typeface, and especially in the context of a monospace environment, to experiment with mixing different faces (Triplicate + Equity).
Back to the monochrome thing: I’d like to be able to use grey in most or all of the places where I currently use colour, simply to distinguish them more clearly; it’d be a lighter grey than the luminosity channel of the corresponding colours. Give me that, and monochrome is quite sufficient. But really, even black-and-white was tolerable, though it’d lend significant difficulty for some features line diff highlighting. Certainly full colour is nowhere near as necessary as most imagine (commonly often never having experienced anything else).
When discussing external eink screens the comments were that you definitely do get syntax highlighting, just not in color but rather bold, italic, different font etc.
That said, I also think that an eink screen (or tablet with screen) that you can use with any laptop has a much larger audience than having it built in.
Interesting. I cded without syntax highlighting for three decades. I think I could go back in an instant as I still haven't got comfortable with modern code editors. Visual Studio Code (as an example) has so much going on that I often can't tell if a word is high-lit because it's in my search field, I have selected it, or some other reason.
The Onyx BOOX Max Lumi features 16 greyscale shades, with more available via dithering and/or halftoning, which is mostly tolerable on text, given 220 dpi resolution.
They had a dual mode so you could have the look/feel of a normal backlight LCD panel but when you wanted to go outside you could toggle to transflective mode.
This means you would have normal refresh rates, color, multimedia, and an actual useful display when outdoors.
Not sure why they ever went bust or what happened to the IP for these displays.
With frontlighting, e-ink is similarly useful indoors or out. Alternatively, you could have an LED booklight or similar to illuminate the screen.
Refresh rates on e-ink are more than sufficient for text, and suffice for getting a general sense of video, though I wouldn't call that a high-level experience.
Scrolling and similar are a bit rough, though the general solution is to avoid doing that, and instead navigate through pagination --- a full page (or portion) at a time.
You left out the rest of the sentence :) ... E-ink is not the medium for getting a sense of a video, also at least for wrinting tasks more than reading, smooth scrolling is a much needed feature to not get disoriented.
I agree that e-ink is great for _reading_ text which is why it is used in e-readers.
And you'd not indicated what you were disagreeing with.
I'll say again that on the device I have, I can quite reasonably get a sense of a video.
Video of BOOX playing video: https://yewtu.be.com/watch?v=XRDJv_-wWBI (Videoception!) Yes, it's B&W, yes, the framerate is low (about 4--8 fps AFAICT), and yes, there's some ghosting. But it's clear what the content is. Not appreciably worth from an old B&W television in the day --- better resolution for lower framerate, perhaps, on e-ink.
If I'm writing text, it's almost always within vim or a similar text editor, and my navigation is either paging forward or back through the document (full-screen repaints), or using search. Again, that is well-suited to e-ink.
I'm very happy with my e-Ink tablet, so this sounds like a very interesting project. The main benefit is that it just feels less distractive and addictive. But it's a far more limited UX than LCD/OLED screens, we have to admit that. I can see the laptop form factor being useful for tasks that mainly requires reading/writing text and doesn't depend on fast refresh rates or lots of mouse interactions, eg authors, perhaps some types of research and programming too.
The design was clever, the "tablet" part had a metal bracket that was used to support it when on a desk and the (small but not bad at all) keyboard was detachable and was connected by a short cable with a "normal" PS/2 connector, here is a photo where you can see the detail of the detachable keyboard:
Different person, but I have a supernote a5x and really love it for writing. It's replaced my "piles of bits of paper" approach. There's a nice way of organising things but I am not strict enough on that.
Why would I need an underpowered laptop with a laggy e-ink screen and probably a bottom of the barrel keyboard?
First of all it's a terrible reading experience. Why would I want to lug around a whole laptop to read some books? My 10.1" e-ink tablet is already perfect. And if not books, what else would I read, documents? documentation? as per what reason? to _program_ on that device? so it would need to have a complete desktop OS to deploy everything that I need? on such limited hardware?
Secondly it's a terrible writing experience. Not in a million years that keyboard is going to be better than a model M or even a decent mechanical keyboard. Also, again, write what? A book or a scientific paper? ok sure, if you are so dedicated that you are willing to buy a device only for that to bring with you on your travels then please go ahead. Also writing code would be impossible because as I've mentioned you would basically need your whole stack.
Lastly it seems to really not solve the problem it claims to solve. What's the purpose of this device, to have less distractions? Ok, then why couldn't I just write my stuff on a notebook or with a typewriter? If you want purpose and intentionality those are really the ways to do it, not mash your keyboard infinitely at a e-ink laptop. Same goes for reading, if the aim is to make reading slower and more comfortable then just read a good old book. Nothing slower and more distraction-free than being able only to bring one with you at a time because of the size.
Please then, could anybody tell me what they find interesting about this product? Because I really don't get it
I already wrote in my comment that at most I can see very motivated writers wanting this device, so your first link is not an answer.
I already wrote in my comment that programming would be impossible unless you literally mean just writing code without actually compiling it and running it and testing it. If you have a stack to take care of, unless you are working with some mind-boggling lightweight stuff, this underpowered hardware would not work, so your second link is not an answer.
Third link is about some genering work that could be done which doesn't really tell me anything, so it's not an answer.
I used to hack on blender with a mind-boggling underpowered chromebook running fedora. And on a slightly less-boggling desktop box. Then they upped the minimum OpenGL version so I was left behind.
Also would compile pretty much anything I felt like playing around with where the only real limitation was memory…well, and time.
The world would probably be a better place if these “full stack” devs were forced to use underwhelming hardware so you don’t end up with 200mb downloads to view a simple webpage. Just my opinion.
You could've asked these questions without being so dismissive. This is clearly (currently) a single person's passion project, you don't need to come at them so hard.
As someone who switches between a Freewrite Traveller and an iPad with external keyboard for my creative writing workflows, let me be the first to say that there is an audience for that.
e-ink is for reading and writing, an underpowered laptop will work just fine for that. Heck, AlphaSmart Danas are doing fine for that and they have Dragonball CPUs at 33mhz.
Do not discount how pleasant it is to split the screen into two regions, have an eBook on one and and editor in the other so that you can write and research at the same time. I've used a 10'' Surface Go for a long time, it was a wonderful little machine. Being underpowered made me proactively conscious of what I was doing with it, which led to more focused work. Still, starting at the LCD for extended periods of time was not fun. I'd love to replicate that kind of setup with this new laptop.
The cult of model M has some truth in it. Yes it is a wonderful keyboard, but guess what, there are other good keyboards out there. They might not be Model Ms or unikey (or whatever the new makers of Model M are), but that doesn't mean they are crap.
You seem to be a developer since your comment is very focused on using this for development, which in my opinion is not where it would shine the most. Still, you could totally use an underpowered e-ink laptop as a development machine if you have an internet connection and leverage cloud services for a ton of stuff. A lot of developers are just pushing stuff to CI/CD pipelines anyway.
You're clearly not in the audience for this, but if you just do a bit of research around how much creative writers love their Freewrites, AlphaSmarts (no e-ink unfortunately), Pomeras, and other distraction free devices, you'd see that maybe some people would find this very appealing.
I'd personally love to have an e-ink laptop. Currently it's unthinkable for me to be in a beautiful spot in the sunshine while doing some light coding or writing. Seems like this product would make it viable to some extent. I wouldn't expect it to become a daily driver though.
If it were convertible (folding) it would be even better.
>It's a cool open-hardware and open-source project.
this is very disingenuous. it's a product being developed by a company. this isn't some github repo with a few images of an open source e-ink reader made by some hacker guy, this is a proper thing that is being designed, developed and maybe pushed to the market.
and to me, if you're a company developing a product you should at least make sure its basic existence is justified. nobody has yet told me why this product has any real use.
Isn't that for the market to decide? It's not like they're using public funds for R&D, if people want it they'll pay for it and if they don't they won't.
I couldn't care less about the market. I am personally not in the slightest convinced by this product and I specifically asked other people to please tell me why they would want it. I just really dislike bullshit products (not projects) that lead nowhere and brain drain the open source world.
Personally I’d probably be a lot more productive without the YouTubes sucking me in whenever I have time to do stuff other than my job.
I read pdfs on my laptop, code using gedit without any fancy plugins for code highlighting or whatever and drop to the terminal if I need to mess with stuff. Hell, the majority of the time surfing the interwebs is in reader view on my iPhone, like a good 90% of the time.
Plus, you are in no way entitled to the brain power of anyone who you are not directly compensating for their labor.
There's one reason alone that I'd be interested, but it's a pretty big one: to work outside in the sunshine without a washed-out screen. For this purpose all I'd need is Emacs to run, and I'd be golden.
Being able to work outside would be fantastic for my well-being, and I'd accept quite a lot of compromise to get that.
Joking aside, I still think this could be an interesting product for a certain small niche of writes that want an easy to read, and to work slowly with a keyboard based experience.
The sort of person that would write using either WordStar or Vi. The sort of person that might still use a typewriter. very niche.
You mention keyboards but that's te thing about them, preference is very subjective.
My self I have an original Made in Scotland Model M and a Cherry Brown Pok3r sitting on a shelf, gather dust.
They're not for me and I don't enjoy using them.
It turns out I find typing on short travel laptop keyboards much more comfortable. I do almost everything via the keyboard so it one of the most important aspects of any computer for me and I choose something different from you.
Different users, different use-cases, different products.
ps I love eInk but this is not probably not for me either but I'm not discounting that it is for someone.
I never understand the argument for less distractions, it is as if one cannot manage to focus themselves, and needs an external entity to behave properly.
This sounds just like the "Don't be poor" solution for economic problems that has been floating around.
Your devices are made to extract attention from you these days. The companies that makes them and the online services most of us use derive their money from the time we spend using their services (so they can profile us or upsell us). It is all designed to interrupt you and draw your attention in.
As a writer, let me say that it is increasingly hard to be focused for extended periods of time while writing if I don't switch to a either a distraction-free device or switch all the stuff off like you said. These distraction-free devices reduce friction in being focused, not only they don't provide distractions but since they are built around the notion of focus, just picking one up puts you on a more focused mindset. Much like putting on some apron puts some people (mostly me) into a cooking mindset. I'm totally able to cook without my apron, but wearing it is part of the ritual. These devices are a tool and also a prop to help us focus.
Be careful of thinking that your own personal experience of something can be extrapolated to other people. Each of us experience distraction and lack of focus differently. What may not be an issue for you, might be a big thing to others.
Dasung do one as well, presumably with the same panel.
One thing I’m wondering is what’s the power draw of these screens? Ereaders famously sip power, but that’s due to the race-to-zero environment. If you’re running these on a 60fps HDMI connection how do they stack up against LCDs?
Oh man. I would absolutely buy this today if it was available. Switching from a tablet to a remarkable helped my work focus one million percent. Switching to that from a laptop for everything else can only help, too (he says while writing this on said laptop instead of prepping for the next meeting).
What I want is a frame.work laptop that uses an eink screen. There are many 13.3 inch eink in panels so maybe it isn't for somebody with the right skills to do this.
What matters for something like this is not the idea but the execution. This page is little more than “I’m going to build a battery car” or “I’m going to build a reusable rocket.” What you want to see instead is descriptions of the hardware projects that the founding team has successfully shipped.
A major hint of trouble is “we’re accepting applications.” A team that is likely to succeed here would have a core founding team in place, not just a Wordpress post.
Isn't this just a rehashing of the value-less pop business advice, "In order to be big, be big already'. It's an open-source venture, crowdsourcing talent. They're not making statements that they have to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
After reading the article and the Hacker News comments, I have to wonder if the approach is wrong.
Instead of using e-ink which does have it's merits but has a very poor refresh rate, why not use an algorithm to adjust typical laptop screens to be more visible in sunlight conditions.
Second thought, smartphones are really on the cutting edge of display technology. If e-ink was viable, wouldn't we be seeing at least some e-ink smartphones?
YotaPhone-style devices always seemed like such a great idea. The back of a phone is 90% useless, and the front of a phone is largely useless in direct sunlight.
Making the back of a phone an e-reader just sounds awesome, especially for larger phones.
The mental model of eink "has very poor refresh rates" is outdated. There are Eink displays on the market by Dasung and Onyx which easily do 40FPS refresh. The Modos project is using the same display modules and dithering algorithm as these monitors.
I am curious what sort of “algorithm” you imagine would work around the essential issue of trying to make a screen bright enough to overpower sunlight falling on it.
I take my laptop out to the park a lot and my primary solutions are to sit in the shade, and stick a little shadow box to my laptop’s lid via the magnets it uses to tell when it’s closed. It’s barely enough to make it usable; you have to fight against the fact that the outside world can be a lot brighter than any lamp suitable for sticking inside a portable computer.
I have not seen those. But based on my experience with other eInk displays, I suspect they are downplaying their refresh rate issues. I don't doubt they are better than previous eInk displays, but I suspect no one would watch a movie on those eInk displays and claim it's anything close to, say, OLED for example.
The refresh rate is improved on screens like the box Mira and dasung notereader, but is definitely still slower than an lcd and will have ghosting/other effects.
I currently use several modern laptops in tandem with an Onyx Boox tablet, but would love to offload even more of my use cases that make sense to e-ink. Followed the Twitter account, and am looking forward to more updates on what this turns out to be! Wouldn't mind seeing them here on HN either ;)
I would buy this indeed. I like working outside and it's not very good at the moment. I think projects like this should do this as Frame.work 'plug-ins' though. We really need some type of open 'shelf parts' company that just makes for a hardware / software ecosystem of compatible hardware and software (drivers).
I came here just to say this too. They don't need to reinvent the whole wheel again. In this case all it is needed is to change the screen and add the Electrophoretic Display Controller. That would be the most efficient approach.
Someone will do it, but this is the second eInk article in a month or so from different people. If they only would spend their valuable time on making a screen for the Frame.work and post the schematics in GitHub. They can sell it and make profits because someone needs to make that assembly as an easy addon for Frame.work; they might even sell it as option?
In the previous discussion, I also learned about RLCD which I vaguely knew about when Qi Pixel was a thing but it seems to have improved. So one of those for the frame.work too, and all is good!
Thank you for the feedback. When we started working on this project, the frame.work was not available, or it's mainboard; we are exploring this approach as a possibility.
This reminds me of the Pixel Qi screens that promised cheaper notebooks with really long battery life (and was used in the OLPC.) Today's backlit e-ink screens do seem more promising, although the versatility of a computer using a slow refresh screen really hurts it.
For the right price it could be useful and find its niche.
Looks interesting, especially the frankenstein model in the ThinkPad T41 chassis as that has a lovely keyboard and display aspect ratio.
However I think the biggest problem to tackle here is not the hardware but the software. If it runs for example some kind of regular Linux distribution or Android it won't be very usable as they're just not designed for e-ink. If on the other hand it runs something custom, it would need to be able to sync documents to the exact syncing setup that I currently use for me to consider buying it (and of course also the exact syncing setup of any other potential buyer, of which there are probably close to infinite, especially in the kind of circles that this device appeals to in the first place).
KOReader is built for kobo e-ink readers but will run on Android and Linux distributions. It supports syncing to Calibre which you could self-host and access over tailscale.
As for webapps, you have einkbro on android, which you could run on linux with Waydroid.
> If it runs for example some kind of regular Linux distribution or Android it won't be very usable as they're just not designed for e-ink.
You've got to start from somewhere. Once you have hardware that can run regular Linux well enough, adapting the UX to e-paper screens ought to be comparatively easy. This is exactly how we got mobile-friendly Linux distributions after all.
While I don't think this is comparable to the ordinary laptops, I am still glad this is present. Mainly because the tech is evolving and I can't wait for e-inks to have colorful displays with 1ms response time! This is one of the many pre-steps towards it.
With an ePaper display that size this machine will be extremely expensive. The main factor providing the distraction free environment could be the Armlogic processor making it uncomfortable to browse the web (although 4 A73 cores isn’t bad at all).
How does it compare to, say, a remarkable tablet? I found the latter great for writing and reading well-formatted pages. But reading a typical whizzbang webpage or using an app to be painful. The lack of a mouse made life particularly difficult.
I have a Onyx Boox Note Air, and it's amazing for reading / writing. I have an SSH app on it (it's Android) and the experience starts to fall apart there. I can type significantly faster than it can refresh and render the characters.
That being said I'm sure there's some magic you could do to reduce latency here if you tried. I know it does some magic behind the scenes with the drawing to improve responsiveness.
> I know it does some magic behind the scenes with the drawing to improve responsiveness.
The way I understand the technology : refresh time looks related to how many pixels you draw at once. When you write with a pen, very few pixels have to change state on a given unit of time (the pixels under the stylus) the "magic" behind fast writing on e-ink is to draw the pixels under the pen as fast as possible then if needed add details once the user stops writing.
The problem with your terminal is once you reach the bottom of the screen and you start scrolling : from now on, every new line will redraw the entire screen. Now you are exactly drawing as much pixels as any e-book which is … slow.
You would need a terminal without scrolling (or some mid-page scrolling). This could probably be done but you would probably have problems with a lot of cli programs.
No direct keyboard support on the reMarkable, but you can trivially get a root shell over USB-C — while charging, unlike older USB OTG setups on phones and tablets with one micro-USB connector — so it’s totally something you can hack together.
None of the bundled software is designed for using a keyboard, of course, so it’s going to be just as DIY as the very earliest Linux handhelds. (Anyone else remember the awful HP “iPaq” PDA Linux environment? I set one up because I could, and them never see the device again because the UX and battery life were so bad.)
What is the highest PPI, pocket-sized, e-ink display?
I'm imagining a 3.5" handheld device for kids, that can't be broken. Very low power. Could show comics or other graphics, but usually just text.
The maximum information density would be to fill that "cheat sheet" with Traditional Chinese characters, written top to bottom, left to right. And that depends on the PPI.
E-ink panels come in two types, one with a flexible backplane and one with a rigid blackplane. The former are durable and resistant to blunt blows; the latter are not. The ones with a flexible backplane don't necessarily require a rigid polycarbonate covering layer; there are commercial devices like the Fujitsu Quaderno that just use them raw. But if you were targeting young children who might take sharp objects to the screen, you'd want to use a covering layer.
I’ve broken more e-ink displays (2) than LCDs (0?), but it could be because they ereaders tend to be left in unexpected places. But either way, they’re not tricky to crush, and the failure mode is much the same as LCDs.
I was legit dreaming about a laptop with e-ink display to help with eye-strain and then saw this post. Hope this product gets to market and sells enough units so that it becomes more common!
If you want a distraction and eye-strain-free writing device that's currently available, your best option right now is probably a ReMarkable Tablet + third party software + keyboard plugged in via USB OTG.
Is it still worth designing new low/medium performance laptops that are not based on a SOC? I mean, the energy requirements for dedicated CPU/GPU units are just not good I guess
However, Waveshare whose epaper displays I use a lot always say they are not suitable for working in direct sunlight. Which is kinda the one thing such a laptop would really shine at.
So, would this be suitable?
PS: Front View and Side View show a svelte laptop but the "Chassis" photo shows a Lenovo/IBM T41? I assume this is a prototype and not the actual chassis.
I wonder if they would sell the display they put in those T41 prototypes, I still have a T42 lying around that would come in handy for this.
Sorry I don't have an answer, only more questions on this. I also read about this limitation. Perhaps it's more of a warranty issue and direct sunlight exposure merely reduces the lifespan by a few percent. Given that you have been using Waveshare displays a lot already, what are your observations on this? Is it really problematic?
I've been using an ancient ebook reader for reading recently, and contrast will be washed out to about 50% when exposed to sun while page flipping (until next refresh). However, I've been thinking this is due to the old age of the device.
I haven't really used them as such, no. Just used them in a few electronics projects.
I have to say though that waveshare's displays are of pretty low quality. They are designed to be used in electronic price tags in stores and as such will never see daylight.
I've used an old Kindle in sunlight and I had no issues, but if I'd buy a laptop like this for a significant price I'd want to be sure of course.
Yes, this was for our prototype and not the actual chassis. We have had conversations about building additional T41 prototypes for the pilot program and or selling them. It's something we will revisit in the future.
I really want this. My daily driver is a macbook pro and I use a boox max lumi as my main programming display. I'd love to have a laptop with this built in.
I, basically, had this back in college. I realize I’m dating myself now, but, back before laptops were inexpensively available, I had a “mobile electric typewriter.” No Internet and I simply used it to write my term papers while away from school or home/on the beach. It was somewhat bulky and had a small screen, but I was able to write my papers without white-out and I had no distractions from the technology.
What’s interesting about this is that it would pose a similar challenge to text editing that teletypes did back in the day. The machines where you had to print stuff to paper (no screen). With Ed, Ex, and those kinds of editors. Much less extreme though.
Yes, I agree, and that is a good comparison, and a lot to learn from that era of computing. One of the areas we are exploring is building native e-ink applications.
Why not an Android based e-reader with a simple stand and a Bluetooth keyboard? Lighter, better for reading and enough if what you want is simple writing. And most probably cheaper. You can even have one with a stylus for handwriting.
You are correct; an Android-based e-reader with a simple stand Bluetooth keyboard could work. I have used a Remarkable and Dasung Not-ereader for this purpose.
I believe creating an e-ink device is, in many ways, a new category of devices that requires changes to the hardware, software, and many other areas to create a cohesive experience for people.
In the long term, I see it as a process of creating an ecosystem of e-ink devices that is open-hardware and open-source.
That was one of my first thoughts too. It would be awesome if this could simply be yet another display module for the Framework Laptop. It seems as though Framework uses EDP (Embedded Display Port) so an e-Ink display of the correct dimensions which uses EDP would work in theory. Although I'd imagine there would be some work to be done to make it function well.
The physical connector is unfortunately not an indicator that the hardware and software needed to drive an e-Ink display will be similar to an LCD. Sadly, e-Ink displays require custom drivers to function at all, and in particular partial refresh (needed to get sub-second updates) requires targeting known dirty regions of the display and updating just those…hence the extra ghosting in the higher-speed mode of most ebook readers & etc. that use EPDs.
I understand that. My point was that the Framework Laptop uses a standard connector so it's at least possible in theory. (Perhaps EDP is very common, I'm not familiar with the space at all.) In any case, partial refresh is obviously not something that one could expect to work without additional effort.
The best distraction-free device is a notebook and a pencil. Now, if you really want to get distracted, start trying to decide which notebook with which grade of paper and which pencil with which type of lead.
Agreed. Bought a chromebook and made a distro that boots into neovim for this reason.
It's fanless. Cost $45. Makes almost no heat after tweaking. Has a 12 hour battery life under use. Basically functions as an electronic (abeit more advanced) typewriter.
Since the screen is 11 inches. I usually prop the Kindle on one side of it and use nvim in vsplit mode. Half the screen becomes e-ink. Can read and take notes at the same time.
Depends how you define high refresh rate. By regular e-paper standards the tech it has come quite far but still below the 60Hz you get in any cheapo LCD tech.
Also, the faster you refresh a e-paper display, the power consumption can even surpass power efficient LCD tech so it's just not viable in that case unless the panel has the capability of partial refresh but even then it's not ideal for consuming fast moving content.
E-paper displays are power efficient for static images (books, price tags, advertising, notifications, etc) but if you have to refresh them fully several times a second, the power consumption goes through the roof (moving the e-ink particles around in their pixel compartments requires more effort than rotating LCD crystals/OLED).
Had to read up on this, because it's very interesting.
The short of it seems to be that production runs of Mirasol panels had very high fault rates, which lead to delays and losses. Qualcomm ultimately decided to abandon it and to fully focus on the Snapdragon processors which were perfectly aligned with the booming IoT space at the time.
Mirasol was apparently very promising and ahead of its time, albeit immature. It was based on electro-mechanical mirror pixels rather than dye. The biggest technical downside seemed to have been that the colors were pretty washed out and bland.
EDIT: It actually did make it to market. There was even a smartwatch powered by Mirasol (the Toq). It was never implemented by the big e-Reader brands though.
I just summarized what I read elsewhere. I have never seen one in real life.
It does look good in the comparison you linked. It is being backlit though, while the E-ink is not. Maybe the mentioned blandness is more of a problem when used fully passively.
It seemed to have been a good competitor regardless, and it's sad that it got mothballed.
I would love a mirasol screen on a laptop or tablet and actually be able to view/read a screen in bright sunlight. I really hope that either Amazon decide to resurrect the technology for their Kindle e-readers, or that smartwatch manufacturers adopt it en masse.
I bought an eink monitor. Overall great except I had to switch to light mode for everything since ghosting was an issue. It had a high enough refresh rate to be workable.
(there were warnings though that using the higher refresh rate settings would greatly affect longevity of the screen though.)
I greatly prefer dark mode for my normal monitors. I greatly prefer light mode for the eink monitor. My multi-monitor setup went exactly as well as you might imagine.
Also the eink monitor I bought for $1k is quite small by today's standards, so I couldn't utilize as effectively as a vertical monitor which keeps more continuous text visible at a time.
The tech on its own? 7/10. I love it and it only lost points because the driver documentation and accompanying tool interface wasn't fully translated from the original Chinese. Ghosting issues and a relatively slow refresh rate were known tradeoffs at purchase time. so can't fault it for that.
On the software side of things, we hope to work with a consultancy to develop Wayland protocols that will offer native e-ink support to client applications.
I have been wondering if something like https://gtoolkit.com/ would fit the bill, though I have to admit I find it a bit hard to grok.
But having a form of interactive notebook running as an OS on a simple device could be a really powerful computing experience.
As noted in thread, I've been using an e-paper device, the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, for about a year. It's my strong preference for reading, and I do some Linux-type stuff on it, mostly through Termux.
A few thoughts:
- If you think you're going to avoid distraction simply by changing the screen properties ... you're likely to be disappointed. Though desaturation and reducing animations does no doubt help. You and your environment remain your biggest enemy.
- Shutting off WiFi is your biggest win for productivity.
- High-density, high-contrast, B&W display is a pleasure to read.
- The lack of tools to schedule / manage / organise tasks and resources on my tablet itself is a huge frustration. Much of that is the lack of tools to view / manage content metadata. If you're reading a book at a time, or 2, or 10, that's not such a problem. I treat my tablet as a library, with 100s to 1,000s of references / documents available. There are no tools to effectively manage these.
- Much of the problem with content presentation online is not due to shortcomings of the PDF format itself, but of displays. Simply having a large enough and portrait-mode display is a huge win. "Large enough" starts at about 9", though I'd recommend 10" -- 13" for the sweet spot. A problem of course is that you want to accommodate the worst cases you're likely to encounter, and for me that's three-column, small-font, scanned in journal and periodicals articles. 13" is almost too big for standard book reading, but it's awfully nice for handwritten notes.
- Having a fixed keyboard at all times might actually be a disadvantage. Being able to flexibly transition from tablet to laptop seems a useful option.
- There's a stunning amount that can be done at shell and with fairly minimal system capabilities. Serving up the modern Web is not amongst these. The degree to which a web browser absolutely pigs out a system really cannot be overstated. This is sad and a Very Bad Thing.[1]
- Android sucks.
- I really cannot express in words how much Android sucks. I'd desperately like to have some sort of e-ink / mobile / portable device that isn't based on Android or iOS. Real Motherlovin' Linux would be awesomesauce. That said, the more you pile onto a mobile platform, the more battery life will suck. Some compromises simply have to be made.
- Android sucks specifically because: 1. The OS management is not geared to constand usage. 2. User state is constantly lost/discarded. 3. The app ecosystem is abysmal. 4. Filesystem access is walled off. 5. The device owner is subordinate to the system and OS, and lacks root by default. 6. Such arcane matters as handling keyboard input consistently across applications seem to be Deep And Insurmountable Mysteries Of The Universe. 7. Google Play Is Motherfucking Spyware. 8. Google. 9. This is not the end. It's not the beginning. It's not even the beginning nof the prelude of the introduction of the preface of the beginning.
- Which raises some interesting prospects for battery-sparing power. A very lightweight terminal handler (reads keystrokes, updates display), paired with a larger system that fires up when Other Shit Needs Doing, such that the platform is effectively catnapping most of the time, might work out. How often the system wakes and processes is an interesting question, but that might be anywhere from every few seconds to every few minutes. The key is for wake/sleep to draw less power than remaining on constantly. On mains power, wake would persist for longer. An audio-output channel might also remain more persistently awake.
- So long as E-Ink (the company) controls patents and production, e-paper display costs will be high. I don't know what the BOM for Onyx's display is, but suspect it's a major share of the device's final $800 cost. That means that everything else will have to fall into whatever residual budget exists. Yes, the laptop will be expensive relative to its processor / memory / storage specs. OTOH, it's probably possible to economise considerably on graphics.
- Prototyping this as a display module option for the Framework laptop[2] might be really interesting.
- If presented as a desktop, optimisations for E-Ink will be necessary. How much of this is attainable through existing desktop environments/software, and how much needs customisation, remains to be seen. I espect some significant teething pains in this area. This applies to both the graphical shell and applications. Einkbro, an e-ink optimised Web browser (Android) is a good study in what optimisations are useful. If anything, the app does not go far enough in favouring paging to scrolling, IMO.
- Some sort of dedicated hard screen refresh is likely necessary. Ghosting is tolerable to a point, and then it's not. Giving the user an option to refresh seems highly useful.
- The ability to divide the screen into different regions of different refresh/quality modes would be useful. Text -> "Regal", scrolling "Speed" or "A2" mode, animations / video, "X Mode". These would probably be assigned either by appllcation, or by content within applications --- e.g., video -> X Mode, images -> Speed. (In my experience, the halftoning / dithering of Speed and A2 modes is actually preferable to "Regal" for images. "Regal" is best suited to text and handwriting.) This is all but certainly an E-Ink / vendor issue, and not something Modos would be able to address themselves, though there might be hooks / conversions in the graphics layer (Xorg or Wayland?) that would address this.
- Modos all but certainly wants to use a tiled / tiling-friendly window manager.
- In addition to the display, I'd like to see a decent audio system, with hardwired audio output and no onboard speaker. Both audio media (e.g., podcasts) and voice comms should be an available function of the device. (Use for voice comms would probably entail battery/performance compromises, podcast playback largely should not.)
________________________________
Notes:
1. How to fix this is of course one of the Perennial Conversations and a Hard Problem. I'm increasingly of the view to 1) split the web into a) content, b) applications, c) media, and d) commerce, and to impose extreme penalties on poorly-performing and standards-noncompliant sites. Of course, a major driver of all of this is monetisation and control, both of which are their own long digressions. But unless these are addressed, no technical fixes will suffice. Defeat the system itself.
> Some compromises simply have to be made. [...] A very lightweight terminal handler (reads keystrokes, updates display), paired with a larger system that fires up when Other Shit Needs Doing, such that the platform is effectively catnapping most of the time, might work out.
Check out PaperTerm [1]. I like it a lot and keep bringing it up, but there have been no other news about it yet.
A separated device to write my blog or some short stories would be a godsend to me. With each year it passes, I feel my concentration vanish more and more. A distraction-free device could help me regain some concentration (I think).