OLPC’s $100 laptop was going to change the world

Have you seen this? https://pi-top.com/

I don't know how it compares to OLPC, but it's basically what you're describing.

We have one of those. It sucks. The battery charge controller is garbage and will drain the battery after a couple of days even when the Pitop is turned off. The keyboard is horrible and the (single touch) touchpad is worse. Screen is alright but low resolution.

The biggest problem however is that it costs as much as a cheap netbook before you include the Raspberry Pi and SD Card. Finally, I'm not one of those people who has to have the thinnest laptop ever, but the inside of the Pitop is cavernous. You can actually store an ethernet cable inside of the laptop! But it's hilariously thick, it feels like a 1990s laptop.

As shams93 said, the OLPC has tremendous industrial design, which nothing else I've ever seen matches. The plastic pieces are remarkably thick, and they all either slide or screw together. There are no sharp corners on the exterior. The textured surface is easy to hold and resists scratching and gouging. The latches are simple, durable, double as port covers, and are adorable. When closed, a series of ridges going all the way around the lid meet in to the body to keep dirt, dust, bugs, etc. from being smeared all over the screen. The screen is rubber shock-mounted. You only need one tool to disassemble the entire laptop. It has a friggin' handle. The lithium-iron phosphate batteries are much more durable than other laptop batteries [0]. And it also has the glorious sunlight-readable display.

The pi-top is only very superficially what shams93 describes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery

Hmm, the case looks quite brittle and fragile (e.g. I don't see rubberised bumpers, etc.). Plus the keyboard has a whole bunch of vulnerable moving parts.

The product page doesn't give details of the battery, so I assume it's lithium ion rather than lithium ferrous phosphate (i.e. prone to explode)? Can't see what screen technology they're using, but if it's anything like standard laptops it won't be readable in sunlight and will require a power-hungry backlight.

Thankfully modern laptops don't seem to require mercury in their backlights (now that they're LED), so the "non-toxic backlight" feature of the OLPC is no longer necessary.