Jepsen's goal is to extend the battery life of laptops to 20 to 40 hours by lowering power consumption by the display screen. She said production of the new screens will ramp up quickly in coming months.

The initial 10.1-inch screen uses LCD technology so it matches current manufacturing procedures, yet costs less to make than traditional LCDs and uses about a tenth of the power.

The screens are designed so people can read them in direct sunlight, turn off the LED backlight to view black and white text, like an e-reader, and offer a fully saturated HDTV-quality color mode for video.

Pixel Qi used Lenovo Ideapad netbooks at their CES suite to show off the black-and-white mode because the LED backlight on the Ideapad can be turned off, a feature few netbooks offer.