Comment by Angus Peart on May 22, 2009 at 5:33am

You want a Motion tablet with a "ViewAnywhere" screen.

I use a Motion LE1600 outdoors for competition hot air ballooning, I have tested lots of different things and the Motion ViewAnywhere is the best. Fujitsu have a outdoor screen too but I didn't find it as good as the Motion. The Motion LE1600 comes with XP but it runs better with Vista/Windows 7 in my opinion.

A decent (used) Motion LE1600 off eBay will set you back about $500, pretty decent for what it is, add an extended battery pack and you can easily get 5+ hours battery.

Comment by helitron on May 22, 2009 at 7:08am

The Netbook Asus eeePC 1000H has a great display for outdoors, very bright.

Erwin

Comment by Angus Peart on May 22, 2009 at 9:27am

I have a Asus eee 1000H and have compared it to the Motion side by side and its not as readable.

The trick to the Motion is the transflective screen, meaning it uses the brightness of the sunlight to make itself brighter.

Comment by Robert Wood on May 22, 2009 at 12:20pm

The OLPC XO-1 laptop has an amazing sunlight-readable display. Its a weird trans-reflective display with LED backighting that give a full-color display that is clearly viewable as a grey-scale display in bright light (or when the backlight is turned off). Currently, this display is only available on the XO-1 educational laptop (not a bad platform itself), but a company was formed by the inventor of the screen to market commercial versions. According to the company website (http://www.pixelqi.com), the new displays are sampling now and should enter volume production soon. Actual customers and products have not been announced.

The XO-1 laptop has some very interesting features for a field computer. (Low power use, Flash storage, sunlight-readable display, wide voltage input range for the DC power input). It was produced specifically as an educational laptop for children, so it doesn't have a lot of CPU power (500Mhz Geode), and has a way-too-small keyboard. It does not have a touchscreen. I use mine frequently as a VNC-based remote display.

More info on the display can be found at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display

The XO-1 itself isn't sold directly. There are frequently units on ebay, however.
It shipped with a custom linux distribution, but people have gotten windows
XP to work.

Moderator Comment by Jack Crossfire on May 22, 2009 at 5:14pm

Who knows if the consumer electronics industry will ever target broad daylight UAV pilots. That would mean no-one was buying our TV sets & staying indoors. Just get an unknown e-book reader & hack it to display graphics over USB. There are lots of alternatives besides Kindle, even though the media is silent on it.

Comment by Paul Mace on May 22, 2009 at 7:35pm

There is no good answer right now. You need 1000 nits, and/or transreflective tech. Xenarc makes 7' external VGA touchscreen monitors that qualify. But it's another piece of equipment and needs its own ciggie power and another cord. When OLED touchscreens come to market, problem solved. Until then prepare to be disappointed no matter how much you pay.

Moderator Comment by Joseph Glanville on May 23, 2009 at 7:35am

I concur with Paul.
We are using a box trailer to house our groundstation atm so even in broad daylight I have all the shade I need. :P

Comment by Paul Mace on May 23, 2009 at 8:10am

...then again, Apple may be announcing just such a beast next week. Chris?

Comment by Garry Qualls on May 26, 2009 at 10:01pm

Thanks for all of the great advice. I tacked down an older Motion tablet today and took it outside, but it obviously did not have their ""View Anywhere" screen that is shown in this review."
I think that for the near-term, I'll try to scare up enough money for a Motion LE1700 with the outdoor viewable screen. If it is as awesome as the brochure pictures, I'll report back on the awesomeness.

Comment by Garry Qualls on June 28, 2009 at 3:34am

Here's one way to get away from glare when you are operating your ground station:

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