I've been doing this with a Boox Tab Ultra for over a year and I love it. It's also real e-ink and the refresh rate is good enough for coding.
I code in the sun a fair amount just with a Macbook. Not direct direct sun - but outdoors on an English summer's day.
Main things are:
1. Use light mode not dark mode
2. Max out screen brightness (obvs) - there are hacks for HDR displays to make them even brighter but my Macbook is too old.
Coding is fine but anything that requires looking at images (low contrast UI design in particular) sucks. However this probably forces you to design good accessible UIs!
I also use a Quest 3 as a display when I can as that also solves the sunlight problem and gives me a huge virtual display to boot.
The biggest thing I'm lacking is a remote desktop app that doesn't mess with my muscle memory. Keys like escape and alt-tab often aren't handled correctly over remote desktop (Chrome Remote Desktop is the best thing I've found so far but that still doesn't handle alt-tab between Mac and PC)
Sunlight-powered computing is an idea that is very, very ripe for arrival. It needs to happen.
I sincerely hope we see, within a few years from now, e-ink laptops where one side of the screen and the underneath surface of the laptop consist of solar cells, and all one need do for a daily/weekly charge, is tilt the laptop in teepee orientation and let it charge, charge, charge.
I've already decided personally to get off the grid as soon as possible - in my case, in the form of a sailboat outfitted with as much solar panels as possible. Having a solar powered laptop has been a fantastic dream for decades - I really think it's going to happen, commercially and successfully, within the next few years.
I could already power my iPad and uConsole with portable solar and battery banks. This all just needs to get integrated, and someone is going to have a HUGE HIT on their hands ..
I struggled with this for years, until Apple released the iPad Pro with tandem OLED and nano-textured glass. With that I could comfortably program outside, even in direct sunlight. The only issue has been when too much sun hits the iPad for too long and forces it to shutdown. But usually in that case I'm also too hot so it's not too much of a bother to find shade.
Now, with the MacBook Pro w/ nano texture display and the Vivid program to increase brightness, I can have a dual display setup outside using the MBP and iPad. It's an expensive setup if your employer isn't paying for it, but it works very well.
I tried using a Dasung e-ink monitor, then I asked for a refund because I cannot review PRs on it. Even though it is a color e-ink monitor, I could barely tell if a line of diff was an addition (green) or a removal (red)
The problem I have with coding on Termux is that it's not a full Linux environment, and a lot of tools will fail to compile because there's some dependency that doesn't exist. That includes, for instance, database adaptors for nodejs, which compromises web app development.
Do you use any workaround for that huge limitation? Or just SSH into a proper Linux box?
I remember that I once planned to replace my laptop display with a Pixel Qi drop-in (there were some replacement screens for standard laptop screens if I remember correctly). Still like the idea of a reflective mode for outside use, although I wonder whether that would have helped my productivity at programming assignments back then..
This is great. I'd like to know more about how it feels subjectively to use it and how the author prefers to position it for readability. My batteryless version of this setup, using smaller screens and a subthreshold microcontroller, is still not yet working.
I'm glad to see that the very frustrating vogue for glossy computer screens finally ended after many years, making regular, nonreflective screens much less unusable outdoors. (I date it to the wide adoption of IPS, which might be a coincidence.)
This great I would love to work on the sunny day outside but it feels so limiting after leaving my 3 monitors desks. It feels like I spend more time switching windows beetwen code, tests, browser and Teams than doing the actual work.
As it is hard see from the photos alone: How much does the aesthetics of the reflective LCD differ from E-Ink?
If power consumption is not an issue would you recommend it for a real-time information radiator that strives for the paper-like look?
BoktaIBM
Man I love sunlight vibe coding. A good RLCD screen is one of the most significant investments I've made for my health in recent years.
I'm in my skoolie, off-grid at the moment in Skyline Wilderness Park in Napa.
My standing desk for the weekend: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPpZjy1Ej9t/
Anyone know if you could run vs code on one of these beasts?
What about using AR glasses like the Viture PRO XR / Luma?
But can you play Doom on it?
I rolled my own outdoor laptop, using an old Dasung e-ink monitor, power bank, and latte panda SBC. Works great for outdoor coding. Cut the chassis out of 1/2' plywood on the CNC router. Dual boots vanilla Windows and Linux. Picture here: https://imgur.com/a/RrpPjET