$99 concept NoteSlate tablet does electronic ink in color, but only one at a time

[m-reader]

This device seems like the next generation "Boogie Board" drawing pad for kids (about USD 45 on Amazon)
I bought a few of these for my kids a while back. I can't see any "quantum leap" in terms usability or features offered in NeoSlate.
My kids still prefer crayons

[beachwanderer]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

13 inch diagonal.
US$99.
Right size, right price.
It's not a reader but once it displays and annotates pdfs it will find a market.

[Hellmark]

Plus they say will be open source and allow for firmware hacking, so functionality can be added.

[RockdaMan]

[wyndslash]

i find it funny that so many "new" so-called tech reminds me of the toys i had back when i was a kid xD

[Hellmark]

I am still looking forward to this. My only question is if you can invert the colors, like if I get a green one, can I switch between green background/black foreground and black background/green foreground. Should be something that the hardware is capable of, just is if they have the firmware able to do it.

The extra info they have placed for more features look great too. I definitely want one.

[MrsJoseph]

As a ereader? I'm saying no. As a great tool for art students to play with in class until it gets banned by a teacher?

[Dulin's Books]

Ok I haven’t touched on this here yet, but I have on a couple of the blogs covering it and just yesterday I was talking with a friend about it, so here goes.

This thing isn't real. There isn't anything about it that is real. There are only renders on that site probably done with http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/index or something very close to it. It is much more like a design student's project than a real product.

Specifics

When the site was first talked about by the various blogs like Wired and Engadget, it said Eink all over the site. They even reported it as Eink without questioning it.

1 Eink doesn’t even advertise an Active Matrix display over 12" and they haven't commercialized anything over 9.7
2 Eink doesn’t do one discreet color at a time like is shown, except black or white, and even if it could it wouldn't be as bright
3 A 9.7" grayscale display will cost $50 to $60 dollars in bulk. So the pricing talked about is impossible with Eink


Of course the person has done an update and removed references to Eink

SOOOO what about that Stylus. What kind of stylus could act as both pen and eraser? Active digitizer like Wacom and Hanson make. Look at the description though. It says the eraser is shaped 10 pixels wide by 1 pixel wide so you have a wide or narrow erase track.

Digitizers like Wacom do not do that, they work or pressure. However, Wacom and Hanvon also do NOT license their pressure sensitive tech. They keep it in house.

So the only thing that might possibly work is resistive. Guess what? The person changed the site to add a mention of resistive touch. Ok so it hasn’t been done this way before but it is possible to do it with newer resistive multi-touch displays from Stantum

So back to that display- If it’s not Eink what could it be? Well it could be SiPix. SiPix has the capability to show colors besides grayscale discreetly. They offer that for shelf labels etc. But guess what. They have never even shown it in public in an Active Matrix display. So SiPix is out. They have nothing bigger than 9 inches and they can't do the color by June either.

What about that similar product from Kent Displays - the Boogie Board . Fantastic product. We have two here at the house. One for the kids and one for us for notes and grocery lists. I've talked with them at CES and in between about possibly even being a retailer. Can't though. It's not so much that other retailers have "exclusives" but they buy the WHOLE production run for 6 months and then do it again when they run out.

Boogie is a ONE PIXEL CHLCD . When you press on it the crystal shift so you see the green layer under. When you hit the erase button, it sends a charge re-aligning the black crystals and leaving the pixel all black again. It has no memory. I can't show you a page you already saved even if you could because its 1 pixel.

They actually intend to come out with a new version of the boogie that would have memory. They have to add a touch layer and have the memory remember that input. They actually wanted to do it from the start but the retailers all told them it would be too expensive to retail so they have been waiting and selling it as is.

The retailers are asking for it now because it is the number one requested change to the product from the folks who are buying it. Depending on the cost of memory and how much they add plus a USB slot or just a card slot for you to add your own memory it will probably add 20 to 25 dollars to the current retail of $40.

It still will only be able to erase the whole page and still will not be able to show you a page you already wrote because it will still only be 1 pixel. You will have to download your notes elsewhere to view them.

So to clarify; Kent displays who makes the display itself can only make a 1 pixel 6 inch display, only whole page erase, can't view previous pages device, with memory for between $60 and $70.

Yet this Note Slate person is saying that by June they can sell a 13-inch device with an Active Matrix display for $99? And the Tech people are falling over themselves to write about it? People who are supposed to be tech experts.


Okay so maybe it's not CHLCD. Digging further in the new version of the site, they actually wrote a description of the display tech.Scroll way down

Detail of the display surface



Pixel units based display screen

Technology behind Note Slate display is based on magnetic electronic paper display units, points, electro-mechanically controlled by the pencil. This simple technical solution works great for functionality of this unique device. The resolution is 760x1080 pixels, which equals 102ppi physical interface.

magnetic electronic paper display... electro-mechanically controlled by the pencil? 102 ppi?

I'm stumped. I've followed the electronic paper and LCD advances over the last 10 years extensively. Spent time at CES, SID, attending seminars and conferences. Reading white papers and Patent filings. Talking with the creators of roll-able displays.

I have never heard of such a display. I cannot even think of a display tech that would be that size and the PPI. Ask the Nates that run http://www.the-digital-reader.com/ and http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/ , two blogs I highly recommend, if they have ever heard of it or wrote about display tech like that.

I challenged a couple of the majors like Engadget Wired and Tech Crunch to find the display tech described. They haven’t responded.

So Engadget actually put some hedge in their most recent article

[IMG]Right now it exists only as renders but with, a release mere months away and a decidedly attractive price point, we're intrigued. Skeptical, but intrigued.[/IMG]

Go back and read their articles about the Notion Ink Adam leading up to it's launch. They displayed more heated skepticism about that product being real, even when they held versions in their hands, then that quote above.

Oh the Adam- another bistable display, Pixel Qi. One laptop per child costs more than a hundred with a 10-inch display. The 10-inch display is the only size Pixel Qi display in production. Of course no discreet single colors. Okay so it’s not Pixel Qi

Just look at some of the things that are on the horizon that have bistable displays, memory, and stylus that are coming from Boogie Board, Hanvon, Asus, Acer and others. Look at their expected price ranges and then ask-

How would a person no one has ever heard of, at a company (is there a company registered?) that no one has ever heard of be able to raise enough money to buy manufacturing in enough volume to deliver a product in 4 months at $99?

/rant

[Worldwalker]

CNN had something about it. Yeah, it's just a concept ... but damn, I still want one.

[Dulin's Books]

hey look at that- actual journalism. http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/25/technology/noteslate/

at least someone writing about it did the home work first.

[Belle2Be]

I am so excited for that to come out. I have no real use for it, but it reminds me of that black paper that you scratch and the underneath shows all the colors...

[Belle2Be]

Dude that boogie board is pretty cool!

[Belle2Be]

I have a stupid question... How do they have pics of the Noteslate if it doesn't exist? They look real...

[Dulin's Books]

they are model renders- drawings done in a computer , modeled in 3d and rendered with tools like blender and luxrender

for instance

this is just an image of a watch created on a computer



these are not real grapes



and these are not actual eggs

[Dulin's Books]

it's a dead give away actually that the device is never seen being held. its too difficult and time consuming to render a hand well enough.

Even with a hand in the pic or with a person holding a device you often find that the display of a device is just photoshoped or rendered in.

for instance this Mirasol video



There are real hands holding something but the images shown on the display are not really there. They are just layered in during post production from an animation done in some software running on a Mac or PC.