Request eDGe expansion displays (and probably totally impractical).

kenjennings · 10-07-2010, 05:06 PM

I've been thinking about how I use the edge and eReaders in general. I read books only occasionally, but I spend most of my time looking at technical reference documentation where I frequently need to flip around to different pages. A single display eReader makes this frustrating. The dual screen eDGe provides some relief, but isn't as convenient as I'd like.

What I thought would be useful (for me [and perhaps only me :-) ] ) would be totally dumb, slave displays (eInk panels) that do nothing more than show a page sent to it by the eDGe. Ideally, this could work over bluetooth [or fill-in-the-blank whatever RF technology comes next]. Hit a button/icon on the edge, and the current eReader page is copied to the chosen eInk slave display. Then I could go on to another section of the manual on the eDGe. With multiple slave screens I could snapshot as many pages as slave screens available.

A business might use them as personal presentation displays, so one person with an edge could drive a presentation with each person using a slave display. That seems more preferable to me than sitting in a dark room, squinting at a fuzzy projector.

Granted, this would probably be practical only when the display, the minimum necessary electronics to drive the display and the communications with the eDGe, and the battery to power it all could be mass produced for $20 to $40 give or take. At that price I'd buy 6 to 10.

borisb · 10-07-2010, 05:24 PM

A neat idea. With paper, you can spread sheets around on your desk and reference them all. With a single screen/monitor, you can't. Having inexpensive slave display panels like you suggest could be quite revoluationary...

ericvh · 10-07-2010, 07:44 PM

course, it would also be nice to be able to use the edge as such a display from a laptop or desktop. I often have my edge propped up next to my desktop or laptop and it would be really nice to just send PDFs (and have them auto-pop up) versus having to manually take care of it. Something like chrome-to-phone, but with the edge and with PDFs and e-ink instead of just the browser. If only our friends would release their bloody SDK.

jsfiller · 10-07-2010, 08:06 PM

This is what i was asking for when I requested that a feature be added where we could have multiple book sopen at once on the eink side, with tabs so you can switch easily and quickly between the books. Also, multiple page view on the eink side (after we get landscape mode, of course, since it is impractical in portrait mode) would be great. I've seen this on the NookStudy and it works great. You can have multiple pages open in the same book side by side (their reasoning was so that when you're working in a book that has solutions in the back you can have the problems on one page and the solutions on the other without having to flip back and forth, but it has other uses too), or you can have pages from different books open side by side.

This is what I'd personally really like to see. I asked about these features once, but I was told there wasn't enough of a demand.

10-07-2010, 05:06 PM	#1
kenjennings Edge User	eDGe expansion displays (and probably totally impractical). I've been thinking about how I use the edge and eReaders in general. I read books only occasionally, but I spend most of my time looking at technical reference documentation where I frequently need to flip around to different pages. A single display eReader makes this frustrating. The dual screen eDGe provides some relief, but isn't as convenient as I'd like. What I thought would be useful (for me [and perhaps only me :-) ] ) would be totally dumb, slave displays (eInk panels) that do nothing more than show a page sent to it by the eDGe. Ideally, this could work over bluetooth [or fill-in-the-blank whatever RF technology comes next]. Hit a button/icon on the edge, and the current eReader page is copied to the chosen eInk slave display. Then I could go on to another section of the manual on the eDGe. With multiple slave screens I could snapshot as many pages as slave screens available. A business might use them as personal presentation displays, so one person with an edge could drive a presentation with each person using a slave display. That seems more preferable to me than sitting in a dark room, squinting at a fuzzy projector. Granted, this would probably be practical only when the display, the minimum necessary electronics to drive the display and the communications with the eDGe, and the battery to power it all could be mass produced for $20 to $40 give or take. At that price I'd buy 6 to 10.

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10-07-2010, 05:24 PM	#2
borisb Edge User	A neat idea. With paper, you can spread sheets around on your desk and reference them all. With a single screen/monitor, you can't. Having inexpensive slave display panels like you suggest could be quite revoluationary...

10-07-2010, 07:44 PM	#3
ericvh Edge User	course, it would also be nice to be able to use the edge as such a display from a laptop or desktop. I often have my edge propped up next to my desktop or laptop and it would be really nice to just send PDFs (and have them auto-pop up) versus having to manually take care of it. Something like chrome-to-phone, but with the edge and with PDFs and e-ink instead of just the browser. If only our friends would release their bloody SDK.

10-07-2010, 08:06 PM	#4
jsfiller Edge User	This is what i was asking for when I requested that a feature be added where we could have multiple book sopen at once on the eink side, with tabs so you can switch easily and quickly between the books. Also, multiple page view on the eink side (after we get landscape mode, of course, since it is impractical in portrait mode) would be great. I've seen this on the NookStudy and it works great. You can have multiple pages open in the same book side by side (their reasoning was so that when you're working in a book that has solutions in the back you can have the problems on one page and the solutions on the other without having to flip back and forth, but it has other uses too), or you can have pages from different books open side by side. This is what I'd personally really like to see. I asked about these features once, but I was told there wasn't enough of a demand.

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