Revolutionary paper tablet computer is thin and as flexible as sheets of paper | Hacker News Reader

Revolutionary paper tablet computer is thin and as flexible as sheets of paper

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63 pointsjoeyespo36 comments

It is really too bad that the guys at Plastic Logic have executed as poorly as that have. I've followed these guys pretty closely from the huge Demo Con reveal in 2008 [1] through their multiple death experiences. I concluded you could give these guys gold bars and they wouldn't be able to figure out how to build product out of them. It is a testament to the potential that I am still mad at this nearly 5 years later!

If they had shipped one freakin' product, that thing where you print to it like a printer and all it did was provide a screen to select which "printout" you wanted to view. That met a huge need. A professional need too, have you seen how many documents a lawyer carries around?

Sadly they were not mentally in a place where they do anything, and that was perhaps saddest of all. Such a waste.

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/11/plastic-logics-e-reader-v...

Argh! I had just forgot about that demo and have been dreaming of a similar device ever since I saw it. Makes me quite sad that no one seems to believe in a market for such a device.

If it weren't for the iPad I believe we would have gotten so much further with eink devices.

I continue to think this would be a pretty awesome ipad/kindle app. The whole 'remote printer' where you implement lpr in the app, can turn it on and off when you need it and then 'print' to it as probably pdf documents.

Instapaper does this pretty well for web sites but if you could include folks who had legacy applications/machines which just wanted to review the printout 'offline' it would be pretty cool.

>>If it weren't for the iPad I believe we would have gotten so much further with eink devices.

No. EInk had more than a decade before the iPad was announced, but nothing happened.

I've been waiting for an A4 eInk reader that could switch pages faster (so I could browse documentation) since 1998. Now I use a retina iPad -- and for the first time in my life, I easily read books and documents off a screen. I used to print everything.

I'm still dying for animated screens that look good (i.e. don't hurt my eyes) in ambient light. I don't think that eink is dead if it improves a lot.

With the demise of the Kindle DX, there are no large format eink tablets. Which is a terrible shame, I love my DX. Nothing else comes even close.

I'd like a full 8.5x11 size eink tablet even better. I'd buy one today if I could.

Seconded! I frequently find myself frustrated that I cannot read ${programming_book} on an eInk-style display (generally in PDF format but the EPUB versions I've tried haven't been much better). Yes, there are e-readers out there that can open the format, but the display is either scaled into illegibility or paginated weirdly or I have to scroll around to see the whole page (all of which are tremendous impediments to the goal of transferring information into my brain). ~brandishes fistful of dollars~ If something like what you suggest existed, I would absolutely buy at least one. I might even spring for overnight shipping, which is unheard of for me! ;)

Briss often does a great job of cutting away the margins in PDFs making many of them quite readable on a regular kindle (and I can only imagine that it is quite a bit better on a kindle paperwhite or other devices with a similar resolution).

http://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/

The name gave me a bit of pause.

I have suggested to the Kindle team that they trim the margins off of the pdf files, which will make for a big improvement in pdf readability. But, nobody listens to me :-( Perhaps if more of you guys made the same suggestion, it will bubble up in priority.

P.S. I will check out the briss app. Looks like a great idea.

Thanks for the tip; I'll definitely check it out. I have an HP TouchPad (running Cyanogen Mod) that those might be readable on (still not the e-Ink, full-sunlight-readable experience that I truly crave, but it would still be a step in the right direction ^_^)

One of my highest priorities for several years has been a full-page, portable PDF reader. My mountainous "must read" inbox is increasingly electronic instead of paper, with most of the serious stuff in PDF format. I can listen to fiction in audio format with half of my brain while grocery shopping with the other half, but my serious stuff requires my full brain capacity (or more) plus hi-rez graphs, equations, charts, maps, etc. to give me a fighting chance at figuring it out and learning something. These little eBook formats are fine for things that I could just as easily listen to in audio (if only they were available), but I need a better reader for my REAL stuff.

The iPad is the closest I've come, but I'd hoping for something more like a touch screen eInk reader in a form factor like the lid of my RetinaMBP.

It may be that those of use who read full-sized technical textbooks after graduation could all fit in the same elevator and aren't worth building devices for, but there must be a huge market for students reading textbooks and everyone else reading magazines. I hope I'll be able to piggyback on their market someday.

Another maddening trend is about 3 years ago I bought a 19201200 display for $325. I thought I'd look to see if higher res was now available. Turns out, the only 19201200 displays are now all over $900. Everything else is 1920*1080.

I.e. display res has gotten 10% worse, not better.

I'd really like about 2000 horizontal lines. I'm tired of blurry text.

Walter, I'm with you, but I think what's going on is preparation for a sea change toward 4K Ultra High-Definition TV and 8K UHDTV. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-definition_televisio... for the news.) These TVs are all multiples of the 1920x1080 areal unit and anything large that isn't will have bad economies of scale.

Okay, fine, give me a retina eInk touch screen tablet like the lid of my RetinaMBP for reading PDFs, and give me a comfy chair and small desk facing a wall-sized, wall-embedded 8K UHDTV monitor (7680 × 4320 = 33.2 megapixels) for software dev.

And maybe by then I'll be writing all my software in D. ;-) (I've been a fan of D for years, but that's a topic for a different thread.)

I do want one of those displays, but not for movies. I want them for text!

It'll probably happen. Right now as mass market devices the 6" screen is the only one E Ink makes enough to be a viable product at the prices people are willing to pay (kind of circular logic but that's the situation).

Soon though, after tablets eat enough of the e-readers' lunch, they'll have to specialize and do some more interesting things. Right now there's so little differentiation between the e-reader products that it's embarrassing to everyone involved. I hope that in a year or two they'll diverge, though.

Umm, there are some other 9" e-ink readers, e.g. Pocketbook 901, Onyx M92,....

I didn't know that. Will take a look.

A friendly reminder - while the display is flexible, all the support electronics are not. See the giant ribbon cables coming off the bottom?

I came to mention this.

Can anyone elaborate on possible benefits of flexibility of such a device? I can't really think of any. I'd guess it would be very problematic to control such a touchscreen without something solid behind the device.

I'm still waiting for a computer I can roll or fold up and stick in my pocket.

Speaking of computers in your pocket, maybe these tablets should be slaved to my phone. I would be okay with a small hard section for a bluetooth connection to my phone, over which I can send data to view, possibly including some code for parallel processing. I guess we need pretty high-capacity flexible batteries.

I don't know why everyone is so obsessed with being able to wad up the display, but glass-subtrate e-ink displays are incredibly fragile.

A reader that can bend a few degrees without shattering, and survive getting poked with sharp things and hard impacts, and can generally be abused the way a paperback book can would be really handy.

There are are techniques to create flexible PCBs. The individual ICs/components themselves are still solid but the circuitry around them can be flexible. It is currently only used in military/speciality applications to my knowledge but it has existed for a long time.

You can also make an average IC _much_ smaller than it currently is. The actual IC in most packages is tiny compared to its packaging. Its really just a matter of time and market demand till they become substancially smaller. The only components that are size sensitive are those that dissipate a lot of heat which will improve with manufacturing process improvements and passive components that need volume for their function (10uF capacitor).

Put it all into a tube along the top or bottom of the device. Also helps store the paper--just roll it up around the tube.

Put it on the side; I think its more natural to pull right or left to "unravel" the eink surface than pulling it up or down.

Curious how the video focuses on features like tapping one with another for transfers and bending for fast-forwarding a video. I guess those are cool features but the thinness itself is much more interesting to me. If I could buy a kindle-style tablet that thin I would without thinking twice.

Cool, although some of these UI abstractions are more neat-looking than they are practical. I'm also not sure that "each app is a tablet" is really a cost effective concept, although I'm sure it's attractive to manufacturers.

What the hell is wrong with their capital letters? This is terrible to read.

If they had really good stylus support it might work. Seeing people trying to type on a floppy faux keyboard doesn't inspire me. This is definitely a promising technology, but I think it's being misapplied.

One of the videos of this thing does indeed show stylus support.

Dumb question, but assuming you are holding a (paper-like) tablet in one hand wouldn't a stylus be useless? It'd be like trying to write on a sheet of paper while holding it in one hand.

I get that impression as well, but I think a clipboard would probably solve that problem ^_^

Do you think a keyboard is better in this scenario?

An onscreen keyboard? With two hands? Yes.

I know this is all still proof-of-concept, but I think the only feature that was even remotely interesting in that demonstration was the ability to bridge your display to an adjacent tablet. The rest... it just seems like novelty for the sake of novelty. Maybe I'm just missing something?

Reminds me of Uchuu no Stellvia, where the kids could place their laptop screens next to one another to make bigger displays. It's cool to see that some people are considering it seriously.

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