Saturday 12 October 2024


Invasion of e-ink 
==================

Recently a quiet revolution took place. All supermarkets in our region
now have e-ink displays.

E-ink is not only used for small sized price tags, but for also bigger
displays, I guess somewhere around the size of an A5 sheet of paper.

I first noticed it in the Lidl, but now all supermarkets seem to have
transferred to e-ink.

The displays appear to have two colors on a white background, black
and red.

Total conversion
----------------
After noticing the appearance of e-ink, I tried to discover where
e-ink has replaced old fashioned printing, and where not.

As far as I can tell, the conversion to e-ink is close to 100%.
I haven't seen any price info that was not on e-ink.

The good, the bad, and the ugly
-------------------------------
From the first day I had an e-reader (around 2011) I am a fan of
e-ink. If e-ink was a bit faster and less expensive, I would love to
have a laptop with e-ink.

When seeing the invasion of e-ink in the supermarkets my first
reaction therefor was positive. It could only mean that the technology
have become affordable for large scale deployment.

Based on this, one could expect consumer application of e-ink to
become more affordable too.

Once a supermarket has transferred to e-ink, there is no need for
continuous replacement of printed information. The result should be
less wasted paper and printing materials. I don't know what the overall
impact of this for the environment is. E-ink has to be produced,
shipped, and doesn't have an unlimited life time. And also there is
the ongoing technological evolution. Maybe the features of newer
displays will make the current display obsolete, for example because
of the introduction of better full-color displays.

From what I have been reading, I understand that these e-ink price
tags and other e-ink displays can be updated over the air. No need to
visit each and every display to update the price or other information.

And that is the scary part.

We already see gas stations vary the prices of petrol and diesel
during the course of the day. The transition to e-ink price tags will
make it possible --even easy-- for supermarkets to follow this, and
vary the prices at small intervals. This will take away the last bit
of price transparency.

As usual, technological progress in itself is not good or evil, it is
how it is applied, that makes it so.


Last edited: $Date: 2024/10/12 19:51:08 $