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http://openinkpot.org/wiki/Hardware

There are a bunch of cheap 'n cheerful Kindle clones that are supported by the openinkpot firmware, if e-ink is your style.

If you need the refresh rates of an LCD, I think you may have a problem. There is the OpenMoko Wikireader which is super low power and pretty cheap; but the screen(although touch sensitive) is a little smaller than what you want and the CPU is more of a microcontroller than what you probably want.

You might also consider going the OLPC route. That gets you a rather nice monochrome screen(with backlight color optional) and, while x86, it is a ~1watt embedded Geode, not too power hungry. That one is also by far the most "normal computer" like of the bunch(i.e. no having to code around super slow refresh rates, and running basically standard linux, rather than building binaries for some microcontroller).

Nothing exactly like what you want(that I know of); but there are some approaches...

And you can't use this technology or a similar one for a notebook display why?

Production eInk screens, at present, have 16 shades of gray, and refresh rate of - at best, sacrificing image quality! - half a second or so. Do I need to explain why this would do horribly bad for any general-purpose notebook?

By the way, if you want open and do not want DRM, nothing stops you from using the dedicated eInk, reader hardware, and run FLOSS on top of that.

In case you want to try out alternative (and open source) software, iLiad is supported by OpenInkpot

The eBook device you describe is BeBook. It costs 300 EUR and reads PDF, DjVu, JPG, PNG, GIF, TXT, DOC, EPUB, Mobi PRC, HTML, CHM, LIT, FB2, and many other formats. It is Linux-based and the firmware is open-source, but there is also OpenInkpot which is openly hackable so you can even write your own reader for whatever format you want. Plus, the device works all over the world, and it accepts an SDHC card up to 32GB, but it also has 512MB of flash memory built-in. its battery lasts for about one month (yes, it's a 4 weeks battery!) and fully charges via USB within half an hour. Much better, the company that makes the firmware allows you to communicate with the software programmers and request features, fixes, etc yourself for the next version.

I don't know about Kindle, to be honest. But you can do that on Sony, and most other readers - for example, OpenInkpot is a fully FOSS replacement, from ground up.

There are a few problems with tablets. Most important ones IMO are: power consumption and comfort of reading.

Maybe you should try something like Hanlin V3 . Cheap, reliable, and comfortable. Of course it runs linux, and you can get some free OS/software from OpenInkpot

I own five BeBooks and I love them. They read HTML, PDF, DOC, RTF, TXT, MOBI, EPUB, FB2, LIT, all without conversion. The device runs on GNU/Linux and you can even replace the factory firmware with OpenInkpot, an ebook ereader OS built by hobbyist free software programmers. BeBook is actually an OEM version of Jinke eReader V3, that is being sold in the US as EZ Reder (you can find more OEMs at the mobileread wiki).

If you are not tied to any specific type of DRM check out Hanlin V3 (or perhaps V9). Check this site for more info on both of them.

I bought V3 about a year ago and I am very happy with it. Bonus points: it does run linux (but there is some problem with releasing sources), it has SDK... But what is most important: there is the OpenInkpot project .

Open ink pot has released the first "free" Linux firmware to run on e-readers:
http://openinkpot.org/