Founder and CEO Mary Lou Jepson has always had high hopes for Pixel Qi’s low-power, super-reflective LCDs. While the displays popped up in niche tablets like the Notion Ink Adam, they have yet to reach the sort of mass-market penetration Jepson has always wanted.
Jepson’s wishes may soon come true, if today’s announcement is any indication: industrial giant 3M is investing an undisclosed amount in Pixel Qi as part of the company’s Series B investment round. → Read More
With nary a peep on the possibility of Apple baking a seeable-in-sunlight transflective display into the rumored 11.6” MacBook Air that’s expected to come floating up from the Pulpit of Jobs at Apple’s “Back to the Mac” tomorrow, I’d like to make a pretty safe prediction (read: offer unasked-for advice): An Apple-anything with such a display would make mobile-warriors’ and tree-huggers’ hearts flutter, and competitors’ hearts shudder.
Seeing the light on this one’s a no-brainer: Outfit the rumored MacBook Air—as well as all MacBooks, but especially iPads and iPhones and iPod touch models—with sunlight-friendly displays. Suddenly, Apple’s the night-and-day winner when it comes to choosing and comfortably using your mobile devices in naturally-lit settings like outdoors on a picnic table or indoors in a brightly-lit room, while saving that not-always-handy resource known as power (the greatest percentage of which gets gobbled up lighting the screens of the above-mentioned products). → Read More
Right now, there is an e-paper display battle. The Kindle currently offers a display from E-Ink, a market leader known for using electrophoretic e-paper. The iPad uses an LED-backlight display soon to be OLED. There is also the new Pixel Qi’s with its amazing transflective LCD that may kill the E-Ink display used in the Kindle. Now next and new to the scene is a display from a company called Nemoptic. → Read More
Pixel Qi. If you haven’t heard of them, you will. Everyone will want one of their screens. They offer both a full color LCD screen and an E-Ink screen in one. From what I have seen so far, the technology appears to be very promising. Other companies seem to think so as well, and are lining up to use Pixel Qi screens in their devices → Read More
I tried a few ways of making that familiar playground taunt work syllable-wise, but it was not meant to be. Slightly more propitious is this agreement between the ambitious (but troubled) One Laptop Per Child initiative and Pixel Qi, maker of innovative hybrid displays. Pixel Qi’s sunlight-readable display technology (seen most recently in the Notion Ink Adam) was spun off more than two years ago, but they just couldn’t keep themselves apart. How romantic! I guess sometimes you just know you’re destined to be together. → Read More
We’ve been looking forward to the Adam for a while now, and some of us think it may actually be a contender against the iPad. Personally, I’m not entirely convinced yet, since I think Android is the wrong OS for a tablet device, but with some custom software on there, this thing really looks like it could kick some butt. The first hands-on goes to Technoholik, where they’ve put up video of a brief demo.
I have to say, I hope Pixel Qi screens catch on, because it’s a way better choice for a device like this than a straightforward LCD. → Read More
Computex appears to be Pixel Qi’s big entrance: what with the hands-on last week and these follow-up videos answering questions and showing more of the device, we’re learning more about this reclusive technology in a few days than we did in the last year.
Mary Lou Jepson is the CTO and founder of Pixel Qi, and she explains what her vision was in starting the company. Among other things, she wanted to take advantage of the existing LCD-creation infrastructure and make the screen, while in other ways revolutionary, work inside the confines of existing computer technology. They’ve succeeded for the most part. → Read More
A friend of the Crunch charbax sent us the first hands-on video of the Pixel Qi e-paper screen, a new kind of LCD technology that uses standard LCD fabrication tools to create an LCD/e-paper/transflective screen that displays full color in direct sunlight and takes very little power.
This is not to be confused with the Kindle’s e-ink technology. Think of it as a new form of LCD that has e-ink properties – readability, low-power cost, and barely any lag – in full color. → Read More
While the world is still waiting for the $75 laptop, the same company is working on a raising cell phone and notebook battery life to 20-40 hours. We’re not dogging Pixel Qi for trying to develop killer tech, but all it seems the start-up is good at is writing press releases at this time. As for the laptop battery life, it’s extended due to a new screen technology that reduces power consumption while maintaining a quality image. Who knows when this will hit the market so don’t postpone your next purchase waiting for these low power screens; the $75 laptop was announced last year and is no where to be seen. → Read More
Mary Lou Jepsen, former chief technology officer of the One Laptop Per Child project, has spun off a company called Pixel Qi in the hopes of creating a $75 laptop. Jepsen was the brains behind the OLPC’s sunlight-readable display and had a hand in the development of various power saving features. Pixel Qi and the OLPC project will work amicably, as Pixel Qi has offered to “give OLPC products at cost, while also selling the sub-systems and devices at a profit for commercial use.” So will a $75 laptop really be possible? Maybe, but let’s all remember that the OLPC was supposed to cost $100 and after all was said and done, it settled at around $186. Perhaps we might be looking forward to a $139.50 laptop from Pixel Qi instead. Whatever the case, it’ll be interesting to see this company develop. They’re located right down the street from me here in Boston (I think) so I’ll see what other information I can rustle up over the coming months. Pixel Qi [Company Website] via The Boston Globe → Read More
Amid all the rancor between One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and Intel, which joined the not-for-profit project and then left it last Friday, a new for-profit startup has been spun off from OLPC to commercialize the technology inside the little green laptop designed for children in poor nations. Mary Lou Jepsen, the chief technology officer of OLPC (and a former Intel manager), has left to start Pixel Qi. The idea is to license some of the core technologies inside the OLPC—sunlight-readable screens, a low-power OS, and other sub-systems—to other manufacturers of laptops, cell phones, and digital cameras. That way, these components can reach the manufacturing scale necessary to bring their price down. At the same time, Pixel Qi will make its components available to OLPC “at cost.” Jepsen explains her low-power, low-cost, green approach to computer design here and states that one of Pixel Qi’s goals is the creation of a $75 laptop. Some of you will recall that the original goal of OLPC was to create a $100 laptop, but that price was later hiked up to $176 and then $188 (if you want to donate a laptop on the OLPC site, it costs $200, with shipping). It seems a bit premature to announce a $75 laptop when we are still waiting for the $100 one. But it is not inconceivable that we will get there in 12 to 18 months. The bigger issue here is that OLPC is having trouble getting to the scale it needs. Instead of the three million orders OLPC once boasted it would have by the end of 2007, it ended up selling only 162,000 (most of those through a “Give One. Get One” program aimed at socially-conscious consumers in the U.S.). Failing to get to scale as a not-for-profit entity, it appears to be trying the for-profit route with Pixel Qi, who’s stated goal is “leveraging a larger market for new technologies, beyond just OLPC: prices for next-generation hardware can be brought down by allowing multiple uses of the key technology advances.” It is not a bad strategy if Jepsen can find any takers for her technology. But it makes you wonder whether OLPC would have been better off going the for-profit route from the beginning. Update: Jepsen just sent me the following note, explaining why she is taking the for-profit route. Excerpt: I can leverage the economies of scale this way to → Read More
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