There was a discussion about e-ink displays the other day that you may find interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8327281

Thank you, very interesting input!

This is something I really want, not for distraction-free writing, but to go in my backyard. I would love to get an SSH terminal in the sun.

Do you not think the slow refresh rates of e-ink diplays would be a problem when working with an SSH terminal?

I think that depends on your expectations... I lived the days where you would connect to a computer hundreds of miles away through a 1200 bps modem. That was pretty laggy sometimes but always manageable...

You kids are spoiled! :-)

I'm not even much of a writer, but I want this for general computer use. Battery life and heat generation would be way better. If the Kindle's web browser was a bit better and the device came with a native text editor, I would use it as my general computing device. I want this so badly.

I rather like the idea, at least in theory. It turns out that nature can actually be rather noisy, not to mention filled with mosquitoes and the like, so I've found it less productive than hoped in practice.

Check out the stuff made by Alphasmart. A larger display would be nice for editing.

I actually checked them out before, but especially their displays seem to be quite limited for writing long texts.