from Hacker News

SunBook – Sunlight Readable Netbook (2014)

by spaniard89277 on 5/30/21, 10:57 AM with 55 comments

  • by iagovar on 5/30/21, 11:05 AM

    I'm submitting this mostly as a curiosity, but I'm sorry, this product is deprecated due to Pixel Qi closing shop. I wonder why this projects never take off, while I see plenty of people interested in an outdoors-capable laptop.

    It seems that there's still some movement in the transflective screen space, but always in other devices.

    If someone here in HN has the money and the willpower to do it, it would be more than enough to provide screen replacements for thinkpads and other popular laptops IMO.

    I currently do some work in the outdoors. I love to somewhere surrounded by nature, open my laptop and use my phone as hotspot, but I feel the fatigue after some time.

    A transflective screen for my x260 could be a game changer. A color e-ink with a decent refresh rate too (although improbable, but there's a community trying to make it real https://forum.ei2030.org/t/proposal-ei-2030-the-community-bu...).

    I've been looking for this kind of solutions for years, and it seems there's plenty of people looking for something similar too.

  • by the-dude on 5/30/21, 11:58 AM

  • by 1996 on 5/30/21, 12:56 PM

    No longer sold. Old CPU. Not enough ram.

    Instead, get a Yogabook C930 with a dual display eInk + color, and touch + pen support on both screens. Great for notetaking in portrait mode: looks like a book, you write with the pen on the eink side while reading PDF or websites on the other side. Smaller than a macbook air or an ipad. Feels lighter too when held like a book in portrait mode.

    Better: Fold over to use eink as the main display in mirror mode after updating the drivers. This suspend the color display to save battery. Ideal with a bluetooth or mechanical USBC keyboard: 2 USB-C ports for charging and connecting a peripheral at the same time.

    Get the APAC model for 8GB Ram + multiband LTE.

    Review and picture on https://little-beans.net/review/yogabook-c930/

    Linux driver is WIP on https://github.com/aleksb/yogabook-c930-linux-eink-driver

  • by RodgerTheGreat on 5/30/21, 3:12 PM

    I have an OLPC I found on ebay- by sheer luck I managed to find an XO-4, the newer ARM-based model. It's a slow, humble machine, but it's rugged as hell, usable in sunlight, gets about 5 hours of battery life in realistic conditions, and doesn't have any trouble running vim, gcc, git, or ssh. I would never use it as my daily-driver, but it is a nice distraction-free way to do a little tinkering in the great outdoors. Would recommend.

  • by throwaway316943 on 5/30/21, 1:18 PM

    I just want to sit on my deck and code on a sunny day. Why does the market not see me?

  • by luke2m on 5/30/21, 11:37 AM

    I wish someone made netbooks again.

  • by dmos62 on 5/30/21, 8:59 PM

    It says something about the laptop market that you have to buy a complete laptop when you just need a sunlight-proof display. With desktop computers, this would just be a monitor, because they're modular.

  • by LocalPCGuy on 5/30/21, 11:02 PM

    I was one of the (probably few) suckers that bought an Adam tablet built around the promise of the Pixel Qi screens. It would replace e-readers (can read at the beach) and be a full-featured Android tablet. Unfortunately, while they did actually produce some of the devices and ship to early purchasers, they were plagued with delays, bugs and poor harware performance. They couldn't/wouldn't get authorization to use the Google Play Store, and so tried to produce their own with (I think) the goal of trying to be a mini-Apple (hardware/OS custom designed).

    It also was produced right when Android 2.x was being phased on, Android 3 was not being adopted and Android 4+ was still around the corner.

    Supposedly the company behind them, Notion Ink, produced a couple other devices despite such a horrific launch with the Adam, but I stopped paying attention as I would never send them another cent after my poor experience, which I chalk up to a learning experience on my part on who to trust with my money.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_tablet

  • by tempodox on 5/30/21, 12:11 PM

    > IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.

  • by ocdtrekkie on 5/30/21, 2:29 PM

    Generally speaking, you can find plenty of daylight readable portables today: They're sold as "rugged" laptops, as they tend to be found in fleet vehicles.

  • by tbrock on 5/30/21, 5:28 PM

    At the bottom:

    > IMPORTANT NOTE: SunBook is no longer available because the Pixel Qi transflective LCDs are no longer made.