Slashdot Mirror
Flexible Electronic Paper
shri writes "E Ink has just announced a breakthrough in flexible electronic paper displays. The new display which has a 100DPI resolution and is only 300 microns thick has the potential of truely changing the way we read our information."
(Is it still vaporware?)
I know this isn't the traditional sense of vaporware - i.e. there are actual hardware prototypes of all these different e-ink/e-paper/e-tc. - but I cant help but wonder when an actual product with these things will break through.
I mean, after all, we keep seeing prototypes of Duke Nukem Forever but that doesn't mean there's an actual product coming. Similarly, all these companies are so proud of their prototypes but none (except for Sony's illfated attempt) have actually come out with a real product.
I'm just bitter: I want my digital newspaper that I can roll up and shove in my bag.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Now teachers will have a REALLY good reason to tell their first graders, "STOP EATING PAPER JIMMY! Didn't you learn when Ralph burned his tongue off last week?!"
has the potential of truely changing the way we read our information.
Indeed, instead of holding the paper flat, I shall now use the double sided version of electronic paper and construct a moebius strip to read my information.
High tech paper airplanes, here we come!
It sounds nice on paper though.
No, what you've got is a really, really expensive pencil and paper. All you save is eraser rubbings.
Considering that most of us are staring at a 96 DPI screen at the moment, I'd say that 100 DPI is pretty darn good for a digital screen. It's still behind paper, but not by too much. 150 DPI is excellent quality. Anything over that only increases sharpness and fidelity.
144dpi = dot matrix
This is somewhat misleading. Many dot matrix printers weren't able to produce dots without gaps, giving the paper a ridged appearance. As long as the pixels are flush on this display, you shouldn't have any problems.
You can order a prototype kit, including Linux on a Gumstix, through the E-Ink website. Provided, you've got a spare $3,000 lying around.
If you have a spare $6,000, let me know. I'd love to try it out, too.
According to this page, the paper retains the image when the power is removed. Even more info here (PDF).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
All you save is eraser rubbings.
Or you save paint, or ink, or writing materials we couldn't dream of in the physical world. Not to mention that digital ink, paint, etc. can all be easily erased or transformed, unlike their real-world counterparts.
I think even more important than saving materials is the fact that you could annotate webistes, documents, whatever, making this (what the GP mentioned, not what the article speaks of) much more than really expensive pencil and paper.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
100dpi = FAX resolution (low-quality)
Umm... no... Fax machines have crummy quality scanners and lossy compression techniques so they do not represent 100dpi well. Go scan a quality pic at 100dpi on a good scanner and let me know what you think of the quality.
Here's a sample at 100dpi.
More
The only new thing about today's press release is that it's bigger than before and higher resolution. But yesterday they announced a colour version, which is a bit more newsworthy.
E Ink have been around for a long time - since at least 1998. The underlying technology is older. They've promised this for most of that time. In the last couple of years they've gone from being prototypes to having some real stuff-you-can-touch-and-buy technology built upon their products (which is more than you can say about most of the competition). The Sony E Ink Libre.
So take it with a pinch of salt when there's an announcement at a trade show; there have been regular updates from Philips promising great things. I suspect a lot of it is for the benefit of the competition.
Just to be clear: I'm not dissing them: The flex display is excellent.
But the real story is that they have built a colour display. This is quite hard to do because the technology depends on small electrically charged particles, white and black. To make colours out of this you either need coloured particles and accurate addressing as well as knowing the colours of each capsule which holds the particles. Hard. Or you need multiple layers and coloured filters, and some careful spacing so that the fields from one layer don't interfere with the next. Or a filter with lots of colours and very, very accurate addressing. Or maybe calibratable addressing.
I certainly didn't ever think that they'd be able to pull colour out of the system. This is quite an achievement.
Eink can be found here. The press release about the colour display is here and the release about the paper, upon which the original post is based is here.
"...has the potential of truely changing the way we read our information."
I'm going to wait for version 2.0, which will include a spell checker.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
OK, dude, just because you watched some episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit doesn't make you an expert on this stuff. There are people, like me, who have a legitimate problem with recycling SOME materials becuase it's more wasteful to do it. Your little "I want to destroy the world" argument is really childish and just damages the reputation of those trying to make a legitimate point against misinformation.
Economically speaking, it is viable to recycle metals and things containing harvestable metal. Aluminum cans, computer equipment, old wiring, and scrap metal can all be resused for products that are equal in quality and at a lower cost. I recycle all my cans and old computer equipment because of this.
Paper is a friggin waste to recycle. It's biodegradable for one. The tree's used to make it in America all come from tree farms. These trees are grown specifically for this purpose, so no one is running into virgin forests cutting down all the trees for paper. There does exist opposing research for both sides on the topic of set asides and the increased cost to consumers for packaging. I think the cost difference is negligible and definitely worth the process of forest conservation. On the topic of pollution, no one really talks about it. It's kinda like a dirty secret. To recycle paper you need to put it through basically the same process as making it - which is horrible for the environment. So, instead of making an inferior product that causes the same amount of environmental damage to produce and doesn't save the forests - I have to say no. Tree farms save the US forests in conjunction with set asides.
Plastic. This ones a toughie. Not the most biodegradable stuff on the planet and it uses up oil to make it. There is also the issue of what can and cannot be recycled. Number 1 and 2 can. Numbers 3 through 7 cannot because of the PVC content. So what to do? Alot of centers ship it to China. That doesn't really sound like recycling, that's more like putting the problem somewhere else. Economically, the cost of recycled plastic is on par with that of plastic made with virgin petroleum, so there is no real incentive to use recycled. Notice on your plastic bottle labels that they say "contains recycled plastic" not made from recycled plastic. If they throw one small batch of recycled plastic into the mix, that statement is true. The corporations ARE NOT recycling shit, thats all marketing baby. And almost everyone buys it. The best thing to do here, don't buy stuff in plastic, or at least cut down on what it is you buy. Look for things contained in glass. Buy your soda in cans. Quit buying water in bottles, which is another scam altogether, and purchase a water purifier. Wash plastic to-go boxes and use them like tupperware.
Glass. Not economically the best, but it is easier on the consuption of resources. The process to sort glass into a usable, high quality material is expensive - so it's not necessarily saving anyone any money to do so. The technology used is getting better though, and I firmly believe that it will one day result in a profitable manner in which to make recycled glass the prefered resource. On a consuption of resources perspective, it requires much less energy to process recycled glass than it does to create it from raw materials. I haven't been able to find any numbers that allow me to detirmine if the costs to sort are offset by the costs to reshape, so the jury is still out on that one. On this matter I err on the side of caution. I recycle my glass.
SO yeah kid, recycling in all cases may not be the best - but please make up your own mind and do some research, not adopt a stance fed to you by two guys with a good argument that you were too lazy to research and adopted as your own.