> A much larger laptop with less than half the number of display pixels is not really the same market. And how's that battery life?
Yes, the display isn't as good but the Neo with 512 GB of storage is already $700 and has half the storage of the other laptop. The Neo also has 8 GB of RAM vs 32 GB. Big differences IMO.
Battery life is "good enough" but not great. It really depends on what you're using it for. If you're doing CPU bound tasks a lot, it's not going to last as long. I guess a takeaway is I was never in a situation where I had to change my behaviors because of the battery life. Unless you're planning to be out in the middle of no where without a power bank for an extended period time doing workload intensive tasks it's fine.
Likewise, the display being only 1080p isn't as bad as you would think. I'd be surprised if anyone is running their 13" Neo at 2408 x 1506 at native scaling. That would be 219 PPI. For reference I run a 4k 32" monitor at native 1:1 scaling and that's 138 PPI. It would be bonkers to consider using 219 PPI from a normal viewing distance. Most scaled resolutions with the Neo would be effectively 1080p resolution but with sharper text.
What you’re missing is that the target market for this devices — the casual laptop user — DGAF about memory or storage if it is at the expense of the directly observable user experience.
Few people want or need 32gb of RAM, nor give a shit about what it even means. Most people just want to run MS Word and Google Chrome and maybe TurboTax.
Sure but if people want a device for only casual browsing and are ok with 256 GB of storage and 8 GB of memory they can get a Chromebook for half the price of the Neo. Not all of them are bad, there's tons in the $300 range with good enough specs for casual usage.
If you want to spend ~$600-700, the laptop I mentioned fits the bill for casual use, a development workstation, media editing and casual gaming at a directly comparable price to the Neo. I replied initially because you wrote nothing good exists in the $600-700 range.
Again, this device isn’t someone who’s buying based on specs. Nor is it for somebody who’s buying based on price.
It’s for somebody who goes to the store, puts their hands on the keyboard, uses the touchpad, looks at the screen, and feels the chassis, and then makes their decision. This is how regular people purchase these commodity items. Most people have no clue what the difference between storage and memory is. They just want to know: will it run [software]? That’s all the specs they need to know. Maybe the battery life as well
If you haven’t already go put your hands on one of these at the store. There’s no $600 laptop that feels like it.
> It’s for somebody who goes to the store, puts their hands on the keyboard, uses the touchpad, looks at the screen, and feels the chassis, and then makes their decision.
We might live in different areas of the world. Every person I know who isn't into tech has never walked into a store by themselves and bought a laptop based on feel or a hunch.
They always get a recommendation from someone who is into tech, either for a specific model to buy online or someone to go with in real life at a store to help them make a purchase.
I don't blame them either, I wouldn't make a big purchase with no information and trust the sales floor to give high quality personalized advice.
You're not in the market for a netbook-type machine if this is the case.
> but with sharper text.
Text huh? Sounds important.
> Battery life is "good enough" but not great.
So, do you want a lightweight client / light productivity machine with tons of battery life, great text, and a kickass trackpad? Or an affordable workstation replacement? Different markets.
Of course it's possible to find a giant ship. The interesting parts are that this vector is crazy cheap using public APIs, and the irony of the location source being the voluntary-or-ignorant active telemetry from a US service person.
It's possible to go to the moon, launch ICBMs, and make fusion bombs. It's news when something possible gets cheap and easy. It's also newsworthy when one of the most powerful and expensive weapon platforms in history doesn't have its infosec buttoned down.
Interesting point. On one hand they probably don't care if everyone knows where the carrier is (actually I'm pretty sure every military power knows where the other powers' military is), on the other hand from a "good practices" perspective, it doesn't look good.
Would it just be virtue signaling, or is there more to it?
>It's also newsworthy when one of the most powerful and expensive weapon platforms in history doesn't have its infosec buttoned down.
Well, peace makes you sloppy. No one is at war with France right now, and no one is realistically going to attack this ship.
If we were fighting WW3, you can bet sailors wouldn't be allowed to carry personal cellphones at all. Back in WW2, even soldier's letters back home had to be approved by the censors.
The readers' natural question is 'does this look reasonable on multiple platforms?'. A two-second glance at two or three screenshots goes a long way to answering that.
In hindsight, this sounds more reasonable in 2026 where graphical documentation is taken for granted. In those days I think anyone would have spooled the .ps to their nearest laser printer and begin building something quickly with it just to check the looks.
I remember following a "build your own text windowing system" tutorial printed in a hcontinous paper back then
The document looks to be nicely rendered, likely from Postscript. Maybe generated by roff, since it doesn't look like TeX. Screen cap bitmaps could be converted to EPS and inserted into the Postscript.
If it was a PS document, you would have to spool it to a printer or screen renderer to read it anyway. The X Window System debuted in 1984, so on-screen renders would have been not too hard to find in a CS department in 1989.
CS is not a degree in web programming framework or DNN modeling framework du jour. Algorithms, data structures, linear algebra, and programming fundamentals do evolve, but gradually.
None of the languages I use at work existed when I was an undergraduate. Very nearly all the data structures and algorithms I use at work did.
Powerful enough laser and accurate enough targeting system is easy to say, but not easypeasy to do. Dumping thousands of Joules on a tiny moving target is much easier to do with explosives.
A little computer board is only a fraction of the BOM of a laptop, so a 'lapdock' of equivalent quality couldn't be very much cheaper than a whole laptop.
If you use cloud storage, your laptop already has all the stuff on your phone anyway.
Is it character mapped, designed to run in a tty terminal? TUI.
Is it pixel or vector mapped, designed to run in a graphics terminal? GUI.
Of course strictly speaking TUI is a subset of possible graphical user interfaces, but the term GUI was coined to denote interfaces other than the already-ubiquitous text terminal interfaces.
TUIs have since absorbed GUI interface elements like buttons, checkboxes, and even pointer input, which I think is causing the terminology complaint here. Classical TUIs like Norton Commander are more about keyboard input and navigation. But being text-mapped is the identifying feature of a TUI, I think most people accept.
His title at Oxford was 'Professor', and he was addressed as 'Tony'.
He made incoming DPhil (PhD) students a cup of tea individually in his office at the Computing Laboratory. It was a small group, but still I appreciated this personal touch.
I never met Tony, but I liked his work. I'm not much of a one for tea, but I don't think either of my PhD supervisors ever bought me a drink - I didn't finish (got cancer, I'm fine now†, some cancers are very curable, but frankly I was struggling anyway so it was a good excuse to quit) and I'm sure it's traditional to buy something a bit harder than a cup of tea if you pass, but I didn't get that far.
Anyway my point here was just a PSA that honorary degrees "don't count". If somebody only has an honorary doctorate but insists on being called "Doctor" they're an asshole. In fact, even outside University I know a lot of MDs and PhDs and in most contexts if they insist on the title "Doctor" they're an asshole even though they're entitled.
† Well not fine, I'm old but I think that's an inevitable side effect of surviving so the alternative was worse.
There's having An honorary degree... and then there's having 6 of them plus numerous other awards, and all the achievements to back them up :)
Regardless, I've met people with only honorary doctorates, and it's a mixed bag when it comes to preferred titles. Often, though, the ones that really care, soon acquire a 'superior' title anyway, so it ends up becoming a moot point.
> It weighs the same as a MBP
A much larger laptop with less than half the number of display pixels is not really the same market. And how's that battery life?
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