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Ask HN: Would you buy a modern Toshiba Libretto?

66 points by atdrummond ↗ HN
In my free time, I've slowly been putting together a proper professional's ultranotebook. For me, that's a screen under 10 inches, a keyboard that doesn't suck, connectivity, insane battery life.

At the moment, I've frankensteined a machine with the following specs:

Display: 7.8 inch eInk display, 300 PPI. 5 finger touchscreen.

CPU: 2 (2.2 GHz Kryo 660 Gold – Cortex-A78) + 6 (1.7 GHz Kryo 660 Silver – Cortex-A55)

GPU: Adreno 619

RAM: 4 GB LDDR4X but ideally min. 16 GB

Connectivity: 5G/LTE, BT 5.2

Battery: 137.7 mAh, hit 144 hours on 115mAh set-up on intensive drain cycle in browser, no optimization for battery implemented OS-side yet. Just long enough so you also can rest on the 7th day.

Typing: 60% keyboard with Cherry switches, low-profile

OS: ChromeOS/Android/Linux all work. I'd like to port OpenBSD once I can sort some driver issues.

I am confident, even with current supplier issues, this could be sold at under $1000 easily. My ideal price-point would be $699 but the likely one is $849/$899 based on comps for the parts and quotes I've received.

Is this something anyone other than me is interested in? Or am I just crazy?

79 comments

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mstipetic
I would be very interested if the screen was a bit bigger. How quickly does the e-ink display refresh?
atdrummond
There's scope for a bigger screen - probably 10" or so. This display is above 30Hz but not quite 60 Hz. You won't get eSports competition quality but north of 60Hz is doable with today's technology.
cehrlich
I love the idea of an e-ink computer, used to own and love a Psion Series 3 [1], and would like to think that I'd buy this sort of thing, but to be honest in the end probably wouldn't. The MacBook Air is just too good as an all-round machine to make me want to carry a second thing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3

atdrummond
I totally get it. I really miss the heyday of the PDA and small handheld PCs (like the HP Jornadas).
_trampeltier
Still have my Psion 5. The keyboard was so much better than so many keyboards today. Sadly it was to slow for Internet. Also no good way to connect. With IR to the cellphone, it was slow even just to send an email.
bergie
In the early 00s we were using a Psion Series 5 as a travel blogging machine. We even had a publishing pipeline where you could FTP upload Psion Word documents to a server, from where it’d be converted automatically to HTML and published on the site.

This was a great setup, with the compactness, battery life, and lovely keyboard of the Psion.

version_five
My eyes are easily irritated by looking at a monitor / screen, and one of the fixes I tried was e-ink. This was a few years ago, I got a large tablet running android. I found that it refreshed too slowly and e.g. scrolling was no good on it. This was just a cheap one I found on amazon. Are there e-ink tablets or monitors that work as well as a regular screen in terms of refresh speed?
atdrummond
I use Dasung's newest models and, while I won't game on them, I got used to watching videos on it very quickly. There's no consistent stutter as with other models I've owned previously.
jacknews
I am interested in seeing your frankentop, have you written it up in a blog post, or submitted to hackaday etc?.

Personally, the Surface or tablet form-factor seems like the future to me, bring your own keyboard.

atdrummond
Not yet - I'd like to put together a proper case for all the components first. In the process of designing the required parts and 3D printing them.
jacquesm
Cool project, would love to see what you cook up.
tluyben2
Maybe a surface 10inch with rlcd or eInk would work well indeed. I do need some type of attachable keyboard though that is also the screen protector. It is fairly annoying as some tablets have to bring all kinds of crap with you to make prop it up and set up a ble keyboard. It is possible but not very nice as daily driver.
jacknews
I think a clever design of screen cover could fold back to act as a stand, or also lock in place like an open laptop, but without a keyboard - for when you actually use it on your lap rather than a table. You rest your own keyboard on the open cover.
jitl
I owned a Surface Pro. Surface form factor is not fun. It’s impossible to pop it open quickly to write down a thought or squeeze in work in a moving vehicle without some body contortions. It’s ironically less portable for hacking than a laptop because you need more stable surface area to actually use the keyboard and display at the same time! It’s a perilous balancing act to use it on an economy tray table - and forget using it on a bumpy bus without a table.

I would only recommend if you will spend >70% of your time using the computer as a touchscreen tablet, or it’s otherwise critical for your use case.

jacknews
As above, I think a screen cover with hinges, so it can lock open like a laptop, and perhaps magnets or velcro to stop your keyboard sliding around on the 'cover' part, would solve all of this. For quick todos or notes, the on-screen keyboard.
bryanrasmussen
I am interested but I already bought a reMarkable. But this is a normal laptop otherwise, meaning if I run Ubuntu on it I can use terminal etc.

I would probably consider getting it for christmas or my birthday, but I am also an outlier as I would be able to take it off of taxes.

on edit: a propos the remarkable one thing I got disappointed in is I used to own a pocketBook and when it broke figured I'd move up to reMarkable because bigger screen, but it's actually harder to read because while larger it's darker. Just an UX observation.

atdrummond
The next gen of the screen here should be substantially brighter than the reMarkable. The screen here is, as well, but I'd need brightness specs for the RM to quantify it. I've used both next to each other and the rM's brightness is definitely a disappointment.
throwaway81523
Crazy I'd say. E-ink is currently too slow to use in a laptop. And why a gpu in an e-ink machine? You can't show animations, screen drawing speed doesn't matter since the screen itself is so slow, etc. Libretto keyboard is too big to be pocketable, but too small for extended typing (I've used real Librettos). Batteries should be removable and standardized like the Framework laptop's are. If you want e-ink, try a tablet, maybe Inkplate 10. Perhaps connect it to computing base holding the battery pack, a raspberry pi or similar cpu card, connectors, and a keyboard.

I do think we need more choices in small keyboards with built in pointing devices. There don't seem to be that many right now, especially wired ones.

atdrummond
The GPU uses fairly modest resources when not in-use - it would be more expensive to get a custom board without a GPU and the returns for that sacrifice would be the definition of marginal. Regarding e-Ink and their refresh speed, while this is true historically and for the vast majority of screens (which is fine, given their uses) there are more and more screens that deliver well above 30Hz.

This design would allow for/have two removable batteries in the current configuration. Removing one wouldn't do anything other than lighten the device.

throwaway81523
I've never heard of a 30 hz e-ink screen. Do you have a link? Yeah most SOC's have gpus now, e.g. the one in the rpi compute module. Better to use modules to the extent possible, rather than custom stuff.

Today's computers bring woe to their users. A new one is only interesting if it solves some of those woes. Which particular woes is this proposed computer of yours supposed to solve? What do you plan to use your own for?

I'm frankly mostly happy with the 10+ yo Thinkpad X220 that I'm typing on right now, for what it's worth. A good replacement should first and foremost have solid Linux support that is preferably blob-free.

tluyben2
For working in sunlight or very bright days; my daily driver in winter is an x220 and it is perfect but in spring, summer, autumn, I simply cannot see anything so I switch to my MacBook m1 which, at full brightness, still is not good already (and it is only spring).

But yes, blobless Linux would be a very big + and so would very long battery life. I have a stack of x220s as backup but they will run out in the end and in my country the supply is drying up as they are good and cheap so people bought them up.

A run of x220 or rather x220t with eInk or rlcd would do me well with the 9-cell battery. But it is a bit big too big and I still need a tablet (in case of 220) and phone which I do not like.

throwaway81523
E-ink is not the answer to sunlight yet. You want a reflective LCD. There were nice monochrome ones ages ago but no one wants that any more. There were some color ones called Pixel Qi that got a little but of traction and maybe are still around, but have stayed pretty obscure. Anyway that's what I'd check.
tluyben2
E-ink works fine in sunlight and are fast enough for my needs but yes, RLCDs seem nice but they seem to have never caught on. I even wanted to get that pixel qi tablet back in the day but nothing ever went anywhere.

This [0] one looks far more reflexive than my Boox tablet; in some parts of the video it's definitely not practically viewable when the light source is on this thing.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysbLlZmG9ik

throwaway81523
Reflective LCD's were used in quite a few early laptops. I used one for a long time. The issue was they were monochrome. It's color ones that didn't get traction, and everyone started wanting color screens. I've never used a Pixel Qi but I saw one briefly once. It was ok, I'd be interested in something that used it for power consumption and outdoor reasons, but iirc its colors were washed out compared with conventional TFT screens. That might be why they didn't catch on. Refresh might have also been too slow for video, dunno.
goosedragons
eInk doesn't have Hz at all that's the whole point. Some of the newer screens have faster refresh modes but these come with a huge tradeoff in display quality. I wouldn't describe it as replicating 30Hz either. More like 12 or 15. A YouTube video is watchable on my Boox Note Air in X-mode but it's a noisy image and I don't think I'm seeing every frame.
atdrummond
Thank you. The Boox Note Air screen is about a gen or two behind the bleeding edge of what can be bought and corporates can get a gen beyond that.

I don't think it's likely we'll ever be playing FPS games (at least competitively) on eInk displays but they can get to the point of usability for most purposes.

tluyben2
I find the Boox display fast enough to work on, it is just cumbersome to having to set it up on a stand and connecting up to it; takes up a table in a bar instead of just a little laptop like you suggest.
robinsoh
> while this is true historically and for the vast majority of screens (which is fine, given their uses) there are more and more screens that deliver well above 30Hz.

Citation needed.

atdrummond
My wording was imprecise (in that such displays don't really operate at a given Hz) but the factory that provides DaSung has multiple sized displays that can display a movie without an perceptible shuttering or frame drops. Unfortunately reviewers are bad at objectively analyzing these metrics for e-Ink reviews but I'll see if I can't take a stab at this when I get closer to having everything in a single enclosure.
robinsoh
> My wording was imprecise (in that such displays don't really operate at a given Hz) but the factory that provides DaSung has multiple sized displays that can display a movie without an perceptible shuttering or frame drops.

I've seen the Dasung paperlike. It cannot display a movie. It is an A2 mode. I don't believe your claim that "perceptible shuttering or frame drops." because A2 drops frames and does dithering as stated in their own manual. http://www.dasungtech.com/download/Paperlike%20Pro%20User%20...

DoingIsLearning
Having looked at e-ink in the market, I would strongly suggest an alternative display technology like RLCD or transflective LCD.

But I would absolutely pay for something ultra portable but with a good typing experience, without those silly dogmas of clam shell designs and 'make it as thin as possible' obsession.

Markoff
yeah transreflective LCD is amazing, extremely low consumption but still LCD, better than eink, I have one in watch I wear and there is pretty much nothing to upgrade to
Tepix
Are there any transflective displays on the market in the range of 8-15 inches (20-38cm) diagonal?
5-
the best/largest production transflective display i've seen was in asus eee note, which sadly wasn't directly sold in the west.

https://www.laptopmag.com/uk/articles/asus-eee-note-ea800-no...

8", 1024x768, 64 grayscale levels, wacom digitiser, sadly no backlight.

the thing runs linux and is trivially easy to run custom code on. i still have a few units.

bick_nyers
I am curious as well, I've been searching all morning and can't find anything
semi-extrinsic
Transflective is awesome if you need it. They are expensive though. I have a 7" Lowrance fish finder bought in 2020, and the display works really well in bright sunlight and pitch darkness. The resolution is pretty low, like 720p, but I don't have the most expensive model.
DoingIsLearning
I think you're mixing the cost of your purchase with the cost of transflective display tech itself.

The famous 100$ laptops (OLPC XO) had a very high end transflective display from Pixel Qi (now defunct).

The tech itself is not expensive it just seems it cannot compete with the marketing of colorful glossy display, even when those glossy displays are impossible to use in the sun.

Markoff
wouldn't make more sense to repurpose some older small Thinkpad X series liner X41, X200 or X240s, they are widely available almost for free, I find 8-10" screen hardly usable with Win/Linux
jaclaz
I guess it depends on what the intended use is, over the years I used eeePC's, Acer One's and similar 10" (or smaller) laptops (yes I know that those are low cost/low performance) without much issues, they are very handy (as in very portable) to (say) occasionally access the web while traveling, troubleshoot (via usb/serial) routers/plant controllers and similar, but also did "office work" on them when needed.

I would say that they are (were) a much more controllable (thanks to the keyboard, even if tiny) tablet, I got one of those "detachable keyboard" tablet (a HP Pavillion 10") a couple years ago and somehow it feels "different".

I think that (besides the e-ink display which is IMHO a very nice idea) there is very little choice of smallish comparable devices, the only one I know about are the GPD ones:

https://www.gpd.hk/

tluyben2
I had a pocket 1 as daily driver from gpd and it was great but they dropped support and the pocket 2 I really do not like. I have a few others of them but they miss the wow factor of the pocket 1. And no eInk indeed.
tluyben2
With i3 it works well. I agree that with a windows like environment it is a bit annoying.
znpy
I have played with an hp jornada 728 and jlime linux back in the day.

The form factor was very nice, it would be lovely to have something similar again but without the limitations of running gnu/linux on a windows ce device.

Tepix
I've used an Onyx Boox Max Lumi 13.3" eInk device as a monitor to try to work outside.

My conclusion for 2021: The tech is just not good enough. There is too much smearing remaining when you scroll and refreshing manually is cumbersome.

tluyben2
I would!! I like to sit outside and write code, but where I live it is too bright. Even in the shade with brightness full on, I cannot see anything.

So beginning this with YES, send me one! You seem to have my goals mostly for the perfect laptop; I don’t care about thin, but 10 inch or under and insane battery life are the things I need. Linux for me too.

Edit; from this [2] I learned that there is another display tech, so the below still applies but then I only need 1 screen but with that tech? I never saw or tried but what I googled looks pretty impressive! Why is it not used more? Most posts about it are ancient and I see pixel qi which was a hype thing until it disappeared.

My dream is to have something like the Fujitsu p1510 [0] with the swivel screen having lcd on one side and eInk on the other, running Linux and depending on the position of the screen which is on;

- closed both are off until you hit the on switch; the outer one will come on so you have a tablet or e-reader - open both are off until you you turn on; the one on the side of the keyboard will be active

4g or 5g would be perfect but not really needed (just share my phone connection). If it had 4/5g I would consider dumping my phone altogether.

8-32gb ideally

Battery enough for lcd to do 12 hours (the p1510 with extended battery did on Linux i3 and I always had a spare with me).

I would pay a lot for that today. I had lugging around all the crap and I cannot use it outside anyway; my m1 MacBook at full brightness is already impossible and it’s only spring.

I also still have feverish dreams about this exact scenario but with a Zaurus [1] or new Astro Slide.

I really care far less about thin than I care about battery life and it being one device to do everything.

I have a Boox note3 and I use that as a screen for my m1 air, but them not being one device and the fact it is basically Vnc makes the lagging worse; it is still ok to work in full sunlight but it is a messy setup so I hardly ever do it.

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/product/fujitsu-siemens-lif...

[1] http://www.gelhaus.net/cgi-bin/page.py?loc:zaurus/+content:r...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30886546

zeorin
This does sound great to me. Do you have any way to keep up to date with your progress?
atdrummond
I'll be setting up a blog soon and will share progress on it and post it here on launch.
KingOfCoders
No, I had a libretto, it was very cool but in the end not usable enough for me.
ge96
No from me just because of the size (typing)/power constraint.

It would be interesting if it was spec'd out/ (able to) connect to full size keyboard/external monitor.

tluyben2
Maybe someone can make an eInk and rlcd assembly for the frame.work laptop; seems to be a nice niche market.
chronogram
Absolutely not. I'm specifically looking at 17" laptops nowadays and while 75% keyboards are still kind of nice, I'd not want to bother myself with keyboards with even fewer keys, unless this is meant as a vacation laptop? Additionally I'd rather not have to deal with closed source graphics on such a device, I don't have to worry about software updates on my Intel Linux laptop or my Nvidia Windows console, I don't want to have to start thinking about kernel versions on a vacation laptop - this is probably not an issue for people who use Red Hat or Ubuntu with their backports kernels. As for the eink I think it's great for watches and reading devices, but for me low input lag is important in laptops.

But if disaster strikes and I have to code and email in the middle of a wilderness not too disconnected from cellular and that's not too cold or too humid I'll be glad if such a device exists.

pappeyrome
I finally found someone that also like 17 inch. Nice mate. Cheers.(I got myself a acer aspire 317 - just Pentium Silver N6000, 8 GB + 512GB SSD. Everything works in linux.
ndsipa_pomu
Sounds like you want a UMPC, like the GPD Pocket or similar. I bought myself a Chuwi Minibook a while back https://www.chuwi.com/product/items/Chuwi-MiniBook.html

Mine came with 16GB ram and cost under £500 new (I think they were getting rid of them at the time). Unfortunately the SSD driver didn't work properly under Linux, so it's running Windows 10 with Linux in a Hyper-V VM.

atdrummond
What kind of battery life do you get with yours?
sto_hristo
I'm on the fence. On one side, those dell xps' are ultra compact and cover all my coding needs, but the price/performance ratio is absurd. And i'm thinking of why not simply get a powerful desktop and a tablet. And if i'm in the forest and need to do work while being chased by bears, i can simply remote desktop to the powerful PC and do the job.

It's obvious that you can't have the best of both worlds in a single package, but the latter option comes close to it with little compromise. And this compromise will become negligible if android becomes open and grants full access to the system so that you can actually compile and run whatever you want on it.

feep
At that battery life, absolutely interested.

Prefer 8gb+, but but I can deal with 4.

Also would prefer a wider form factor, but I ain't gonna build one myself to get it.

That battery life is the appeal.

If it has (close to) full size keys, I want.

Please.

Any idea of;

1. Weight?

2. Thickness?

atdrummond
Weight can come in under 3 lbs. With some work, possibly right at 2. Battery is by far most of that.

Thickness won't be super thin as I'm targeting low-profile but still proper switch keyboards. Likely 3/4 of an inch. Perhaps scope to shave that in future.

f7ebc20c97
Dude, 4GB of RAM? Sure, it's fine for the software I write. But what about normal people?
atdrummond
4GB is what my build has. It can be done with 16GB and am waiting to hear about 32.
jitl
Overall I’m very interested in ARM Linux laptops with good battery & keyboard, but even 10” is too small, so I don’t think Libretto form factor is interesting to me.

> Display: 7.8 inch eInk display, 300 PPI. 5 finger touchscreen.

I think this idea is cute, but I’m markedly less productive under 16” of screen; and working below 12” is out of the question for me. I’d prefer a 12.5” - 14” form factor. If you can squeeze the bezels these screen size can still be extremely portable!

I did a lot of Chromebook RDP to desktop in college (best performing $700 total computing platform for a student) on a 10”, and found I worked at about half the speed on tasks that required research. There’s less of a penalty if you’re strictly writing stuff down.

Likewise with screen technology. I’ve yet to use an ePaper display that wasn’t the worst part of a device. I have friends who are frustrated with reMarkable 2; will your display be better than reMarkable?

> CPU: 2 (2.2 GHz Kryo 660 Gold – Cortex-A78) + 6 (1.7 GHz Kryo 660 Silver – Cortex-A55)

This is fine for me!

> GPU: Adreno 619

This is fine for me

> RAM: 4 GB LDDR4X but ideally min. 16 GB

If you are buying a SoC part instead of motherboard RAM, would it be tricky to get to 16GB without increasing the CPU part?

Anyways more is always better.

> Connectivity: 5G/LTE, BT 5.2

I am okay with BT feathering to my phone, but I haven’t used a laptop with wireless internet in 10 years so maybe there’s a special joy to it.

> Battery: 137.7 mAh, hit 144 hours on 115mAh set-up on intensive drain cycle in browser, no optimization for battery implemented OS-side yet. Just long enough so you also can rest on the 7th day.

This sounds great, thanks to the ultra low power display.

> Typing: 60% keyboard with Cherry switches, low-profile

This is probably the most interesting part of your list to me. An excellent keyboard will distinguish your device from Pinebook Pro and other low power ARM notebooks. Right now mechanical laptop keyboards are very focused on gaming.

Given the hacker community love for classic X series thinkpad design, I’m surprised no one is re-targeting that design with ARM components and vastly simplified internal architecture.

Shadonototra
way too overpriced for such poor HW, it is a way for China to sell its tech junk, no thanks

For cheaper, you can get a Steam Deck ($399), and a case with a physical keyboard (probably $50)

atdrummond
That would be many orders of magnitude more units produced - and I was being extremely conservative with the estimate. If there was demand, the price could be brought down much further, but a better comp is going to be something like https://www.gpd.hk/
justsomehnguy
> For me, that's a screen under 10 inches

I used to lug around Acer W4-821 [0] with 8.1" screen. It was almost perfect for me, because it fit nicely in the pockets of my coats in the winter and was small enough to fit in a messenger bag in the warmer seasons.

It also was light and small enough to actually use while standing and even could be used with one hand as a ebook reader (or reading looong pages).

> Android

No, thanks. For ocassional SSH/RDP session it is fine but for anything else it is PITA, and newer versions of Android make leaps and leaps to incorporate the walled sandbox iOS-style for the user data. If you mean "professional's" then I need a control over my data (and apps), not Googlemerate.

> RAM: 4 GB LDDR4X but ideally min. 16 GB

8GB should be a good start. On the before mentioned W4-821 I managed to run CentOS in VirtualBox, on Windows and still be able to do things. That thing had 2GB of RAM.

[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Iconia-W4-821.129255.0.ht...

atdrummond
Android would be an option, not mandatory.
blablabla123
For travelling it would be nice. I really don't like carrying any fragile/expensive hardware with me longer than workplace distance. (Used to have a subnotebook for that but it fell apart)