What’s Happening at Pixel Qi – Mary Lou Jepsen’s Blog

I saw some rumblings this week about what went wrong with OLPC (One Laptop per Child). Having had, depending on your perspective either a front row seat or being in the ring myself – It is a good but unpopular idea that Nicholas Negroponte did several amazing things and oddly doesn’t get enough credit for them. The first is that he ended the discussion of whether computers belong in children’s hands – they do. And the second which will endure is that he also answered the question of whether inexpensive computers can be useful – they are and their numbers are growing. 50 Million units are predicted in the next 12 months just as Nicholas predicted in 2005 (and was roundly laughed at for). His critics saw only speeches but he gave everything he had, everything he could muster – to this effort and he has succeeded in ways that will long endure. Today more than a million children see the world in ways they would never have, and millions more will in coming months thanks to what Nicholas created.

- Mary Lou

See JKKMobile comparing our screen to normal LED backlight LCD in Asus netbook

http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2009/06/hands-on-with-pixel-qis-new-epaper.html

And Joanna Stern of Laptop Magazine with her excellent take

http://blog.laptopmag.com/hands-on-with-pixel-qis-power-efficient-netbook-screen

In the turmoil of getting from Taipei to San Antonio last weekend I ended up briefly at my home in California, and Josh Quittner from Time Magazine who has been very eager to see our screens stopped by.

Here is what he had to say about the screen:

http://nerdworld.blogs.time.com/2009/05/30/pixel-qis-killer-display-is-the-future-of-e-reading/

wow!
- Mary Lou

Charbax has posted video of our screen and an interview with John Ryan (COO and VP of Sales and Marketing of Pixel Qi). Enjoy

http://techvideoblog.com/computex/pixel-qi-screen-demo-live-from-taipei/

- Mary Lou

Here is a very short mpg clip of a movie playing on our screen.

Very Short Video clip of 3qi screen showing a movie

Also, the laptops we got happen to be running Windows XP, but an investor in Pixel Qi has already bought an Acer Aspire One and installed Ubuntu 9.04 on it. We will plug in our screen shortly (we are SID and Computex this week and so this might take a week). We will update here.

- Mary Lou

Hi all, thanks for your comments. Since writing my last entry on Friday I’ve been back to the bay area from asia, and then flew to Texas for the SID Display Week conference www.sid.org. I keynoted this business conference this morning (Monday) and have been demoing the display most of the day. Please hang on for answers to your questions! I’ll try to put more pictures up soon, but attached is a high resolution one of the 3qi display compared to my kindle display.

Kindle and 3qi display with backlight off – side by side

- Mary Lou

By popular demand here is the first picture of our new screen. In the above picture, two 3qi screens are shown side-by-side: one of our screens is in full color saturation with its backlight on, the other of our screens is shown in its epaper mode with backlight off. These screens will be available this fall in netbooks and ebook readers. Size: 10.1″ diagonal.

Mary Lou

PS: I’ve had many requests for a peak at the 3qi screen outdoors: I took the snapshot below yesterday, on my iphone (sorry, it’s just not a great camera) outside in the hot tropical sun. The laptop is on top of a shrub. Apologies for the glare from the metal bezel of the screen; this will of course be covered up in a real product. Nonetheless, we think its a stunning screen.

more information at www.pixelqi.com

I’m typing this note on one of the first screens out of the fab, with the backlight turned off, retrofit into an Acer AspireOne netbook, in a poorly lit hotel room in Asia with a crisp high resolution epaper experience. We will be showing off the new screen in private next week: both at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan (June 2-6) and SID Display Week in San Antonio, Texas (May 31-June 5).

If you want to see it: contact: vivek@pixelqi.com

- Mary Lou

Yesterday I spoke at the Interactive Displays conference in San Jose, CA and announced that samples of our screens are due at the end of May/early June. These samples are being made in the ample spare capacity of one of the largest LCD manufacturers in the world – and thus can be moved into high volume mass production quickly – this fall really.

We are starting with a 10.1″ screen that can fit into a standard netbook laptop, and is driven in the same way. It’s plug, form, fit compatible – meaning one can unplug the existing screen in a 10″ netbook and plug our new screen right in.

These screens have a paper-white epaper look with very high resolution and contrast – and – video rate update to allow scrolling, looking at video clips and so forth. With the backlight on they sport full color saturation and video.

More details to follow in the coming weeks,
Mary Lou

Lots of people ask us if we are working on netbooks or ebooks.

The answer is: both.

We are making screens that are more readable than regular laptop screens, and our studies show they are as comfortable to read as electrophoretics in existing ebook readers. But these screens also update quickly, show video, are sunlight readable and (with the backlight on) show full color. In addition, our display screens integrate with touchscreens of many different varieties (an analyst I know is aware of over 200 different efforts by various companies in new and improved touchscreens).

We have now completed our first full round of funding (series-A) and are putting our full attention to getting our products completed and out to our customers.

- Mary Lou