Orchid XP v3 wrote:
> Indeed. I had assumed that *all* laptops work this way. 

But you can override it in software. So if you override it incorrectly, 
you have a problem.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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scott wrote:
>> Now, I suppose in product development terms, 12 years isn't very long. 
>> But I don't expect this technology to entire the mainstream in my own 
>> lifetime...
> 
> I wonder what people were saying about LCD 20 years ago...

But LCD hasn't changed how a screen is used, it's just made it a bit 
more efficient and a bit smaller (and, arguably, a bit crapper, 
certainly in the low end of the TV market). E-paper requires a whole new 
product and a whole new set of habits from the consumer. This will take 
a little longer. I don't expect to see e-paper widely used anytime soon, 
and only maybe within my lifetime.

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>> I wonder what people were saying about LCD 20 years ago...
>
> But LCD hasn't changed how a screen is used, it's just made it a bit more 
> efficient and a bit smaller (and, arguably, a bit crapper, certainly in 
> the low end of the TV market).  E-paper requires a whole new product

You mean like how LCD has popped up in cars, phones, portable navigation 
devices and games consoles etc - none of which had any sort of graphic 
display before LCD.

> and a whole new set of habits from the consumer. This will take a little 
> longer. I don't expect to see e-paper widely used anytime soon, and only 
> maybe within my lifetime.

As I already said, ePaper is already used in supermarkets, it will only be a 
matter of years (not decades) before it becomes more cost-efficient than a 
lot of existing paper-and-ink based things.

Sure, it's not going to replace a real book or a newspaper for a long time 
(perhaps never), but there are plenty of other markets that ePaper will take 
over relatively soon.

Another example is the odometer in cars - the OEMs are already asking for a 
zero-power display for this so that it is always visible.  Expect to see 
ePaper based odometers within 10 years in cars, and cars have one of the 
longest product development cycles.

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scott wrote:
>>> I wonder what people were saying about LCD 20 years ago...
>>
>> But LCD hasn't changed how a screen is used, it's just made it a bit 
>> more efficient and a bit smaller (and, arguably, a bit crapper, 
>> certainly in the low end of the TV market).  E-paper requires a whole 
>> new product
> 
> You mean like how LCD has popped up in cars, phones, portable navigation 
> devices and games consoles etc - none of which had any sort of graphic 
> display before LCD.

Yersss... true, although I still don't think there has been a 
fundamental shift in the way pre-existing devices are used. With phones, 
the screen technology (as well as the computing and battery technology) 
has just enabled several common portable devices to be integrated into 
one small one, without changing how the different functions are used. 
Navigation devices would also still be small and indispensable without a 
screen. Most people don't use the screen with them anyway, the voices 
tell them when to turn up wrong-way streets or drive 60 ton lorries down 
unmade country roads perfectly efficiently ;-)

>> and a whole new set of habits from the consumer. This will take a 
>> little longer. I don't expect to see e-paper widely used anytime soon, 
>> and only maybe within my lifetime.
> 
> As I already said, ePaper is already used in supermarkets, it will only 
> be a matter of years (not decades) before it becomes more cost-efficient 
> than a lot of existing paper-and-ink based things.

We might have to curb society's urge to throw everything in the skip 
first, but that's another matter of course.

> Sure, it's not going to replace a real book or a newspaper for a long 
> time (perhaps never), but there are plenty of other markets that ePaper 
> will take over relatively soon.

Yes, I guess I was only really considering the issue of it replacing 
actual paper.

> Another example is the odometer in cars - the OEMs are already asking 
> for a zero-power display for this so that it is always visible.  Expect 
> to see ePaper based odometers within 10 years in cars, and cars have one 
> of the longest product development cycles.

Fine, but that's really just a gimmick, isn't it? Would it really be 
cheaper, more reliable and the rest than a small mechanical dial? Maybe 
it would, I'm only being a luddite cynic here... :)

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>> Another example is the odometer in cars - the OEMs are already asking for 
>> a zero-power display for this so that it is always visible.  Expect to 
>> see ePaper based odometers within 10 years in cars, and cars have one of 
>> the longest product development cycles.
>
> Fine, but that's really just a gimmick, isn't it? Would it really be 
> cheaper, more reliable and the rest than a small mechanical dial? Maybe it 
> would, I'm only being a luddite cynic here... :)

In general electronic components are orders of magnitude more reliable than 
mechanical ones, which is why car OEMs always try to replace mechanical 
parts with electronic ones if they can.  It happened decades ago for the 
distributor in the engine, and more recently for the odometer.  However for 
the odometer the ability to see the mileage of the car without turning on 
the ignition was lost.  ePaper can fix this, because the disadvantages it 
has (low switching time, poor quality colour displays) do not matter for an 
odometer.

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> Ah. Right now rendering two scenes (in a mind of testing) with max
> brightness on the screen, ie. burning the CPU. I'm not consuming extreme
> memory nor using wireless interfaces
>
> groath ~ # cat /proc/acpi/battery/C1B5/state
> present:                 yes
> capacity state:          ok
> charging state:          discharging
> present rate:            2749 mA
> remaining capacity:      3797 mAh
> present voltage:         11671 mV
>
> 2749mA*11671mV=~32W.

Mine goes up to about 45W while using POV with both CPUs, drops to 22W when 
idle.  There is about 5W difference between min and max screen brightness.

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scott wrote:

> Mine goes up to about 45W while using POV with both CPUs, drops to 22W 
> when idle.  There is about 5W difference between min and max screen 
> brightness.

Wait... a dual-core laptop?

31337!!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/

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scott wrote:

> I wonder what people were saying about LCD 20 years ago...

Um... maybe I'm just stupid, but I'm pretty sure when I was 7 years old 
I was *using* LEDs...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/

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Orchid XP v3 wrote:
> scott wrote:
> 
>> I wonder what people were saying about LCD 20 years ago...
> 
> Um... maybe I'm just stupid, but I'm pretty sure when I was 7 years old 
> I was *using* LEDs...

Hahahaha!

Oh dear...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/

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Orchid XP v3 wrote:
> 
> Wait... a dual-core laptop?

Yep. I wasn't after CPU power, but the cheapest one to fullfill my specs
(including hardware rs-232 and parallel ports) was equipped with one.
But I won't complain, since C2D ain't a heater.

> 31337!!

Yeah :).

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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