Your assessment of the properties of the display specifically seem to go counter what I perceived as a convincing argument by the OLPC guy brought up in a TED talk at the time, namely, that the two biggest cost factors of a new laptop are marketing and the display unit. He then argued that the project can largely just do away with marketing altogether (plausible) and went on to say that even displays that come out of production with a single pixel error have a massively reduced price tag. From that I concluded that the project could reasonably build cheap hardware if only they went with no advertising and run-of-the-mill display units that narrowly failed quality checks.
Nothing in that talk hinted at the possibility that instead of opting for a established and proven technology like LCD they'd choose to go with RDF (reality distortion field) displays instead.
Nothing in that talk hinted at the possibility that instead of opting for a established and proven technology like LCD they'd choose to go with RDF (reality distortion field) displays instead.
I feel being lied to.