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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
We may want to wonder when e-ink or some other eyeball-friendly display will become available for PCs and laptops. Unfortunately, businesses don't presently hear a lot of complaints about employee eyestrain... in fact, less than before with the switch to LCD screens. So I doubt an interest in new displays is on their radar at all.
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My former employer did a desktop refresh where everyone got upgraded to Win XP Pro and Office 2003, and new Dell flat screen monitors were part of the package, so display updates do occur.
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When e-ink (which does use less power) gets full color, it will be more attractive to businesses as a display that cuts down their power bills, and we can expect to see a gradual phasing out of old screens with e-ink, just as PCDs phased out CRTs.
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I'm not sure the power consumption reduction will be attractive enough to justify the investment. The payback period would be too long. Every PC manufacturer I'm aware of is currently full speed ahead on technologies to cut power use, but most approaches concentrate in power saving in the CPU. The faster you push the CPU, the more power it uses, and the hotter it runs, leading to secondary costs in the cooling required. It's particularly a factor in the data center, as servers shrink in size and more get crammed ito racks, requiring additional power lines and more A/C to keep it all cool.
And the color eInk prototype I heard about was 12 bit, which might do for ebook readers but
won't do for a PC, and the refresh rate for eInk would be a killer. Can you imagine trying to view flash animation on an eInk screen?
I don't see eInk getting more than niche usage in corporate IT plans.
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Dennis