Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
Is anyone coming up with a tablet format incorporating this screen? I just ordered a K DX, and am just wondering....
(I know Aztac is talking to them next week, but a unit may not come to market for quite a while.)
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Haven't read about any specific company beyond Astak announcing a Pixel Qi device. The thing about tablet/slate PC's is the touch interface might all but eliminate the true epaper mode due to light blocking. So, I am sensing that the first tablet type devices will be Astak's reader w/o a touch and tablet/slates which us an active pen based digitizer under the display itself. And that adds to the cost a fair amount. Still a $500 10"-12" device is very attractive. Even a $300 8" reader that does more than just read.
So, as I see it there are still a number of practical application issues needing solutions. I see the first few devices as all non-touch devices being mostly just retrofit to the new display tech in order to get them out in the wild. Around Q1 of next year is when I think there will be more advanced devices.
That will also give them time to refine the whole process. And as mentioned by
Mycropht this display has PVI fudging their huggies. Because, even though eink kicks the the 3Qi's rear end on power, the HUGE advantage is mentioned in the video, in a month from now or so, if it was needed, production could jump from a few hundred displays/day up to 10,000/day pretty much overnight. That is because the displays are made in the very same plants which make LCD's. PVI simply cannot do this because they have been resting on their laurels and not taking the potential competing tech out there seriously. I did find it interesting that the economy has caused a number of production facilities which is actually harming the very device which could resurrect their business in very short order.
It will be interesting long term which tech wins...but that is a decade away and at that time, with luck, none of us will care anymore.
For those comments about something not being in the video, it was all there and discussed and there. I know I had a weird thing happen when viewing the video the first couple times, it started in the middle so I had to manually go back to the start where they are inside looking at two devices. There is also a companion video with Mary Lou announcing the display at some event which is quite interesting, and does not come off as hyperbole to me.
When you listen to her describe how the display works it will make more sense. The major comment she makes about how the displays work is they developed a way to only refresh portions of the display which needed refreshing. So rather than full screen refreshes, just like the new Epson controller, only portions of the display are refreshed as needed. Right there is I bet well of 50% of a display's power consumption, the remainder pretty much being left to the backlighting. And by far the display has been the major power pig on computers. CPU's like the Atom and ARM pretty much use no power unless they need to do something. I am assuming there will be new display controllers which also better manage power as well. but it could be as simple as a controller firmware update on existing systems.