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Many laptop screens have optical issues for automotive applications. As your viewing angle goes off-axis, the contrast ratio suffers, which means too much light being thrown at the user. Take a laptop in a dark room and set it to display as dark an image as is reasonable (a black picture, don't mess with the display brightness settings and such). Turn the laptop around so the screen is facing away from you and use it like a flashlight. Point it at a white wall and you will see patches of light and dark - soft beams of light coming off the laptop display at various angles. This is light the display cannot control... Light that will be given off no matter what's being displayed on the screen.
You're probably thinking "okay, that's kind of interesting but why does it matter?" The answer: Night driving. Those stray beams of light coming off the display will light up your car interior at night, making the road more difficult to see.
Really, the simplified LCDs used by the MPGuino have the same issue, but the screens are far smaller and backlight brightness far lower than a laptop, resulting in far less stray light.
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