> And what about e-paper?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper
> No backlight, no need of light most of the time, viewable in plain 
> sunlight.

Yep, already used in some supermarkets (eg the Edeka at Munich airport uses 
it) for price tags that consume little or zero power and are fully readable 
under normal lighting.

The main problems that need to be overcome though are switching time, 
resolution and contrast ratio.  At cold temperatures the switching time for 
black to white is counted in MINUTES not milliseconds, even at room 
temperature they take a couple of seconds to switch...

Totally reflective displays are already used (eg in Game Boy Advance I 
think) but for colour ones you only get ~33% of the reflectivity of a 
black/white display due to the colour filters.  Also in order to see it in 
dull conditions you need to add a frontlight (as opposed to a backlight) 
which further reduces the reflectivity, leading to lower contrast.

Rest assured there is huge research in this area, expect something like 
ePaper to one day become mainstream.  There are a lot of hurdles to get over 
first though...

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