Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Um, momentarily dimmed like at night? It is dark 14+ hours a day in winter in my part of the world. Or on a plane, in a building, ...
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If a solar (actually Photo Voltaic--PV--may be more accurate) e-book reader was built like a "solar" caluclator, it would operate on indoor lighting. A small backup battery (or other short term power storage device) would be needed to avoid loosing one's place should the device loose power momentarily by angling away from the light source, passing a hand over the solar cells, etc. On a calculator, the purpose of the PV cells is to operate the device, not to charge up a long term battery. The cells do not put out enough power to both charge a large battery and the device. The same could apply to an e-book reader. If the PV cells would put out enough to allow using the device in indoor lighting and charge up a tiny battery or other storage device to ensure a momentary interruption or reduction of power from the PV cells wouldn't immediately shut down the reader.
I just pulled a small calculator out of my desk and played with it a bit. It hasn't been used since too far back to remember. I turned it on (yes, it has on and off buttons) and it worked fine with only the light from the light over my desk. After about 20 seconds of fooling with it, I put my thumb over the PV cells to block light from hitting them and the display and the calculator continued to work for some time. The same happened when I pulled the calculator in my purse out. It hasn't seen light in weeks. From the time I walked to my desk from my purse (less than five seconds), then put my thumb over the PV cells, the little battery inside the calculator had accumulated enough power to operate the calculator for around a minute until I got tired of waiting on it to die and put it away.
It would not be unrealistic to expect a "solar" e-book reader to do something similar. As long as there is enough light to read by (such as indoor lighting), it should be able to operate without interruption and charge a small battery that would ensure continued operation should the light source be interrupted momentarily and allow the reader to remain on stand by or sleep mode for long periods of time to avoid losing one's place in a book. I'm curious to see if this reader is capable of all that and have usable firmware for me.