persistent image on power down

[drazvan]

Hi everyone,

I've just noticed that if you press the Reset button on the back of the device, the power gets cut off but (because of the nice eInk technology) the current image stays on screen. Is there anything in this mode that could damage the device or could I leave it like that indefinitely? I'm thinking that I could display the device in a showroom and show off the nice screen without having to have the device powered at all times.

Any ideas?

Thank you,
Razvan

[CommanderROR]

there is actually no real info on this so far. Some people seem to think that the display could "burn in" in some fashion. others say this isn't possible.
The only thing I can say for certain is, that if I leave my STAReBOOK on for a while with the text being displayed it starts to turn greyer after a while. This greyness dissappears after a screenrefresh however.

[narve]

In fact I would like to leave an image on the screen after shutdown. If nothing else, then just to impress other with my cool gadget

But hitting the reset button instead of shutting down properly does not appeal to me... would like this to be customizable.

[Adam B.]

When my iLiad was bricked, it had the same image on the screen for a week and a half. It didn't effect the darkness of the screen or ghosting in any way that I can notice.

[jharker]

The characteristics of e-ink as a display device aren't well understood over the long term yet...

But the Sony Reader is, I believe, designed to simply be left on a page for a long time and not turned off. So since the iLiad is based on the same eInk, I would imagine it's just as safe for the iLiad as it is for the Reader...

[vranghel]

Originally Posted by CommanderROR

The only thing I can say for certain is, that if I leave my STAReBOOK on for a while with the text being displayed it starts to turn greyer after a while. This greyness dissappears after a screenrefresh however.

It is the same with the iLiad. I accidentaly left the device on for a few hours, and when i got back the screen was a lot greyer. After the first pageturn it went away, but the gosting was significant. After the second page refresh the ghosting went away completely(went back to the 'normal' amount of ghosting)

As for when the device is reset, I havent noticed any changes(maybe because i left the image on for not too long, maybe because there are no side effects to it)

Who knows?!

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by vranghel

I accidentaly left the device on for a few hours, and when i got back the screen was a lot greyer. After the first pageturn it went away, but the gosting was significant. After the second page refresh the ghosting went away completely(went back to the 'normal' amount of ghosting)

That's whyI believe that e-ink can't really 'burn in,' because the particles aren't affected by where they are in the capsules, and would eventually reach their own equilibrium (the graying thing).

About the only thing that could happen along those lines is for the driving hardware (the bits that push the particles around with electric fields) to physically wear out or get damaged ... or for the particles to lose their charge. The first should take pretty long to happen, since the particle pushers aren't actually on all that much. The second, well that one's pretty obvious, but the third is the one I don't think we really have much of an answer on, but I expect it to take long enough that I'm itching to replace it in a major way before it happens (on the order of 10 years, I think I've heard rumors about )

[RWood]

The Sony automatically turns itself off after an hour of inactivity and blanks the screen when it does. However if it is plugged into the USB it displays a high contrast image in the center of the screen. I've left it (by accident) like that for over a day with no ill effects.