Noteslate

[FaeMinx]

Oh how I loath marketing.

what a complete and utter turn off.

First impressions are the drawing area is a bit small, and device looks too thick...

I can't really be interested as I now have a zero tolerance for bull, but if it turns out to be lightweight, and has fantastic battery life... I may, just may give it another look after it has been torn appart in various reviews.

Why the ef is 'sharing' so effing important to you needy little herd animals?
I share nothing, except advice nobody wants to hear, and couldn't understand even if they tried.

I lose respect for myself every time I have a weak moment and try to help yet another fool.

Somebody write about this thing when you get it.
And please, get straight to the dirty truth... whoever composed that site should hang their head in shame... or at the very least, get fired.



Sent from my GT-N5100 using Tapatalk

 

[rygD]

Uau, you guys can handwrite?!

That one looks like a nice alternative but I could not find any drawings on the videos, which is the more important part for me. I´d have no need for the apps.

Which one are you talking about? If it was the one I linked lemme know so I can find the cheesy marketing video I watched. The guy was drawing and writing all over one of the textbooks it comes with.

Ouch, my eyes. Looks like a website made in the 90s.

I know, I love it. Maybe it WAS made in the 90s.

That colour ebook looks horribly laggy, and I'm not sure it supports pressure sensitivity.

Lag probably is a problem for some people, although my old one takes forever just to change to the next page sometimes, so probably not much of a problem for me. What I wasn't impressed by was the color in the video I watched. I wanted to see bright stuff, but the few I saw were very muted tones, not like what the pictures show. Maybe that was because they were textbooks and menus.

Up until now, most E-readers I've seen either offer stylus support or front light, but not both.

My Sony one from 6 or 7 years ago has both. I don't remember if you can actually draw or write with it, as I just use the stylus to keep the screen fingerprint free when navigating menus and highlighting. You can also make notes, but I think it is just an on-screen keyboard, however I may be wrong. Both e-ink screens and the method for frontlighting are improved on newer ones from other companies, and I think many people say the battery life is too short. The touch layer makes it a bit too reflective in some lighting conditions. I think it also has Linux, since some people care about that (I do, and I think that was a factor when I was deciding one one, as was the file formats that were supported out of the box).

First impressions are the drawing area is a bit small, and device looks too thick...

(snip)

Why the ef is 'sharing' so effing important to you needy little herd animals?

I totally agree. I wouldn't really be interested in drawing on it very frequently (just not really my thing). Although I agree that it is "too" thick, this could be a positive for me, and I don't mind it too much. I would need to mess with one to decide how I really feel about, and probably need to see inside (why is it so thick? is the case really thick, or is just so packed full of stuff it needs that size, or is it being used to store air?).

 

[levi]

Lag probably is a problem for some people, although my old one takes forever just to change to the next page sometimes, so probably not much of a problem for me.

Yeah, that sort of lag is a minor irritant, but lag when you're trying to write or draw something can be a real killer.

What I wasn't impressed by was the color in the video I watched. I wanted to see bright stuff, but the few I saw were very muted tones, not like what the pictures show. Maybe that was because they were textbooks and menus.

Perhaps, but I think I could see colour in the menu icons. I think it's just not that good at colour without some form of front lighting.

 

[rygD]

Color screens of this type are still pretty new, so it might get better as people continue to work on it. If we could get good color and minimal lag it might make a good laptop or tablet screen.

 

[ekianjo]

Color screens of this type are still pretty new, so it might get better as people continue to work on it. If we could get good color and minimal lag it might make a good laptop or tablet screen.

The reason why e-ink screens dont consume much power is that they consume zero power to stay in a set state - if you need to refresh the screen 24 times per second there is no point in using e-ink anymore, you probably will end up with consumption similar to LCD and worse, washed out colors (most color e-ink screens have really bad color reproduction for now).

 

[b_o_b]

I noticed some lag in the Noteslate video during writing. Something that is very noticeable with my eee note as well. For a perfect paper replacement there should be 0 noticeable lag. The writing surface should be a bit rough for the best writing feedback and no or very thin protection layer above the touch screen. The eeenote has a glass protection layer that is appr. 1 mm and makes accurate adjustments hard and feels "slippery" - like writing on ice.
That the thing has a thickness of 1 cm doesn't bother me the slightest. It doesn't have to be as thin as a sheet of paper, it should be able to replace a blocknote or organizer.

 

[erico]

@rygD I was talking about the jet one, I found no handwriting/drawing on the video.

That onyx one though, looks good enough. Its lag seems ok for an e-paper.
Prices that reach 350$ and up are pretty bad since it hits half the price of the smaller wacom cintiq, which is, so far, the only digital drawing tech I know to be good, not to count their quality. Wacom products tend to live forever.

 

[HelenF]

Are there any open e-ink tablets around? (Open-source OS available and can change the OS without relying on exploits, like for Pandora and Galaxy S3.)

 

[erico]

I don´t know.
But I know this company, Yiynova has some interesting stuff way cheaper then wacom.

 

[rygD]

The reason why e-ink screens dont consume much power is that they consume zero power to stay in a set state - if you need to refresh the screen 24 times per second there is no point in using e-ink anymore, you probably will end up with consumption similar to LCD and worse, washed out colors (most color e-ink screens have really bad color reproduction for now).

Exactly. When reading a web page it usually remains static for a while. If you only scroll down after 10 or 20 seconds it could greatly improve battery life. If all it is being used for is watching videos and playing games, yeah, there probably is no improvement, and it is worse all around.

@rygD I was talking about the jet one, I found no handwriting/drawing on the video.

 

[erico]

Thanks @rygD, although it dosen´t show much and his hand is over it so I can´t check the lag.
I guess in my case an e-paper thing could only be interesting as the proposed noteslate (the original one and price), anything else, then a china cintiq clone might come way more useful.
There are other cool ones apart from yiynova.

 

[rygD]

@erico, there is enough lag that I can see it in the video. It would probably suck if you are impatient and have bad handwriting, or if you are trying to draw good pictures, not just notes and reminders.

 

[kuru]

I remember wanting an eee Note, but the OS put me off back then. Price seemed okay at least.

There's now Sharp WG-S30
It looks rather flat compared to the Shiro. The smaller the surface of a drawing pad, the flatter it should be to comfortably work on the screen's side your hand is located on. Having to hover or change pen grip sucks.

Edit: I honestly haven't considered lag at all. Guess a Note 3 or an old X61T would be considered having good response? That's what I'm used to personally.

 

[erico]

That Sharp WG has no lag at all, impressive.

 

[levi]

Well, if it's an LCD, I wouldn't expect a decent LCD soltuion to have any perceiptible lag. The challenge for this thread is getting an e-ink screen that's capable of anything approaching that.

That said, with a decent diffuser over that back reflector, there's perhaps nothing especially wrong with an LCD for these purposes. I still think that for drawing you really need pressure detection though, and the sharp doesn't appear to offer that. Comic drawing especially goes through an inking process before it gets coloured (often by a different artist), if it gets coloured at all, so a b&w solution with pressure sensitivity could be ideal for that.

 

[b_o_b]

TBH I am not very impressed by the Sharp WG and I agree with the reviewer. Maybe writing doesn't have any lag but the screen looks awfully dim and reflective.
I also have a pretty unique ebook/tablet: the entourage edge and the e-ink screen is great and not reflective. This device was created in 2010. Seeing the competition in 2016 makes me want to charge and use it again. Even though it is bulky, buggy, slow and scribbling / annotating lagging.

 

[rygD]

TBH I am not very impressed by the Sharp WG and I agree with the reviewer. Maybe writing doesn't have any lag but the screen looks awfully dim and reflective.
I also have a pretty unique ebook/tablet: the entourage edge and the e-ink screen is great and not reflective. This device was created in 2010. Seeing the competition in 2016 makes me want to charge and use it again. Even though it is bulky, buggy, slow and scribbling / annotating lagging.

While watching the WG-S30 I grabbed my reader (a PRS-700 if anyone wants to check specs) since his complaints about reflectiveness were common in reviews for the one I have. Our lighting was different, so I couldn't tell which was more reflective. Since I had mine, and he had the paper white next to the WG, and I knew mine wasn't nearly as contrasty I checked mine to see which it was closer to. Even with small letters and intentionally obscuring text with a reflection it was easily readable with the frontlight off at about an arm's length away. I am pretty sure he was correct about the WG having an LCD. Maybe they should have added some contrast controls.

The Entourage Edge has some pretty cool features. Even though I don't need to write/draw on such a device I would probably find excuses to do so since it is easy to switch between no background, lines, and a grid. That is one thing I wish real paper could do.

 

[b_o_b]

Entourage Edge is indeed pretty cool, but cool with many flaws.. You usually only need a tablet or an e-reader not both. After a while I bought a more convenient tablet and an eeenote and the EE is now carefully stored in a box. I can't get myself selling it though.

 

[edgex004]

I really just want a MS Surface with an e-ink screen, Linux, and a high quality pen.