> Even assuming that is so, I think a bulky mains-powered PC is not anything close to the right tool to provide any of that.
I must ask: did you read the article? It's about a 5V system with a Raspberry pi in a case with an official raspberry pi screen packaged in a water-tight container with a custom keyboard - not too far off from a kindle, just with room for a battery/power bank. Add a modest 50W solar panel, and you have better data-density and durability than a stack of paper.
> better data-density and durability than a stack of paper
Eh, what? Paper has survived for hundreds if not thousands of years. Show me your RPi 1000 years for now, next to an equally old bible, and we'll chat again. (Not a religious argument, the bible is just an example.)
Edit: Make it 100 years from now, the effects should be obviously already at that point.
> Eh, what? Paper has survived for hundreds if not thousands of years. Show me your RPi 1000 years for now
If my RPi has a long chain of monasteries taking care of it and making new copies every few decades, I will have more than a few RPis to show you. I think paper is an extreme example of survivorship bias: how much of it was preserved vs the total amount that was produced. If you want durability, go with clay tablets, or carving on rocks (but you're trading off against data density)
> Is the bible printed on lambskin parchment? If not, the paper probably dissolved.
Even the lowest quality paper can easily last 50 years when stored in acceptable conditions. IIRC, they've even recovered 2000 year old readable papyrus from ancient garbage dumps in Egypt.
And SD card (especially a high-density one) will almost certainly fail with catastrophic data loss before a decade or two, if not sooner.
I must ask: did you read the article? It's about a 5V system with a Raspberry pi in a case with an official raspberry pi screen packaged in a water-tight container with a custom keyboard - not too far off from a kindle, just with room for a battery/power bank. Add a modest 50W solar panel, and you have better data-density and durability than a stack of paper.