Neo On The Road!

[ElPaso]

A powerful MacBook small enough and durable enough to throw into my backpack and take on the road! Whip it out at rest stops and roadside eateries, hotspot it through my Eye Phone, catch up on the business of life. I think they built the Neo for travelers like myself - From El Paso to Okie City to West Des Moines - Next stop Springfield, MO, then on to Amarillo! (by mornin' . . . ).

The Neo has been outstanding on our current road trip. Its size and capabilities, along with its awesome battery life, compares so favorably to my bigger, clunkier, slower, more expensive PC. Hammer Down!

The perfect travel companion to throw into your EDC.

 

[Andy_2341]

Currently wiriting this on my week old Neo as I ride to Indianpolis from 400 miles away. Hotspot's working great and it's more than bright screened and light enough. The only thing is I just noticed that Vehicle Motion Cues are not supported. Not a huge deal but a curious omission.

 

[4sallypat]

Going to Las Vegas this week and going to use the Neo with my in-vehicle hotspot.

 

[ElPaso]

Currently wiriting this on my week old Neo as I ride to Indianpolis from 400 miles away. Hotspot's working great and it's more than bright screened and light enough. The only thing is I just noticed that Vehicle Motion Cues are not supported. Not a huge deal but a curious omission.

I might be wrong, but it makes sense that Vehicle Motion Cues would not be supported on a MacBook because it is not usually used in a moving car? I don't know anything about it though

 

[ElPaso]

Vacation is over - we're back home - the Neo ranks as an A+ device. What a joy to use in hotel rooms. I loved taking it to hotel "free breakfasts" and cracking it open right there while sipping coffee -- the jealous looks from other Holiday Inn Express breakfast diners lol . . . .

 

[ElPaso]

Going to Las Vegas this week and going to use the Neo with my in-vehicle hotspot.

Keep us updated with your experiences with it - both positive and negative

 

[Andy_2341]

I might be wrong, but it makes sense that Vehicle Motion Cues would not be supported on a MacBook because it is not usually used in a moving car? I don't know anything about it though

It’s supported on all other macbooks M2+ per Apple’s documentation. Not a huge deal for me, but it is curious as to why. I used it a few times on my M4 Macbook Air.

 

[boppin]

Going to Las Vegas this week and going to use the Neo with my in-vehicle hotspot.

And how are you doing this? Mobile internet? I ask because never heard this before.

 

[ignatius345]

Currently wiriting this on my week old Neo as I ride to Indianpolis from 400 miles away. Hotspot's working great and it's more than bright screened and light enough. The only thing is I just noticed that Vehicle Motion Cues are not supported. Not a huge deal but a curious omission.

Does that feature work on any MacBook? I thought it only worked on iPhones because it uses data from gyroscopes, which I thought laptops don’t have. Or am I wrong about this?

 

[Andy_2341]

Does that feature work on any MacBook? I thought it only worked on iPhones because it uses data from gyroscopes, which I thought laptops don’t have. Or am I wrong about this?

Customize onscreen motion on Mac

On your Mac, stop or reduce the movement of elements on the screen.

support.apple.com

It appears so. Just certain ones only.

 

[ElPaso]

It’s supported on all other macbooks M2+ per Apple’s documentation. Not a huge deal for me, but it is curious as to why. I used it a few times on my M4 Macbook Air.

Thanks for catching me up on the information 🙂

 

[ignatius345]

It’s supported on all other macbooks M2+ per Apple’s documentation. Not a huge deal for me, but it is curious as to why. I used it a few times on my M4 Macbook Air.

They must have not put in the motion sensors needed to make this work on the Neo, likely for cost savings. And I assume the M1 MacBooks just predated them putting the sensors in Macs at all.

 

[whitby]

Nice to hear you are having success using the Neo as your traveling companion. My Neo has been superb (I got it in March when first available and is the 512GB version) and works well for me as my 'coffee table' machine. Does everything I need without complaint and battery life is excellent.

I have a 14" M4 MBPro which I use for travel (it has an SD card slot and the screen is better for the photography work I do) and a 16" M1 Max MBPro which sits on a desktop since it is so heavy. But the Neo is my goto machine in the house for my emails, web browsing and documents. Only gripe is that, because it is the Indigo machine, the contrast for the keyboard characters is poor, however I am a touch typist so can cope. Otherwise fabulous value for money.

 

[Ctrlos]

How do people drive such long distances? Anything more than 2 hours in the UK is an utter trek, best avoided if you can at all.

 

[maflynn]

How do people drive such long distances? Anything more than 2 hours in the UK is an utter trek, best avoided if you can at all.

LOL,

The size of the US is the reason, if I have to get my daughter from school, its an 8 hour drive. This past year, I visited her every 3 week, so basically once a month I'm on the road for 8 hours.

 

[Ctrlos]

LOL,

The size of the US is the reason, if I have to get my daughter from school, its an 8 hour drive. This past year, I visited her every 3 week, so basically once a month I'm on the road for 8 hours.

Could you/she not get the train? In the UK I went to University a good 4-5 hours away just so nobody would visit!

 

[maflynn]

Could you/she not get the train? In the UK I went to University a good 4-5 hours away just so nobody would visit!

I had to look, and yes, trains do travel there, once a day, not on weekends, and costs about 200 dollars for one way. Oh and Its also a 14 hour train trip, lol

 

[Ctrlos]

I had to look, and yes, trains do travel there, once a day, not on weekends, and costs about 200 dollars for one way. Oh and Its also a 14 hour train trip, lol

What?! Ouch! I see why Americans fly everywhere now.

 

[Andy_2341]

How do people drive such long distances? Anything more than 2 hours in the UK is an utter trek, best avoided if you can at all.

2 hours won’t get me half way across the state I live in. Heck, it takes 25 minutes just for me to drive half way across my county to get to school. Rural Tennessee is big.

 

[Luftkopf]

How do people drive such long distances? Anything more than 2 hours in the UK is an utter trek, best avoided if you can at all.

My parents live 2 hours away, and they’re just out of town, here in Australia.

From an Australian perspective US states are small. Texas would be one of the smaller states here. The nearest border to me is only 3 and a bit hours away, but go north or west, and you’ll be driving 12 or 13 hours respectively, just to leave the state.

 

[lambertjohn]

You don't need a Neo to haul your computer around with you everywhere. I have an M5 15" MBA that I take everywhere. It's light and thin and so powerful. I even haul it around on my motorcycle in my backpack. Yeah, it didn't cost $599 but for me, it's the perfect travel computer. FYI: OP, I grew up in El Paso. Best city on the planet. Good people. Great weather. Fantastic food. Just a wonderful, multi-cultural city.

 

[Andy_2341]

My parents live 2 hours away, and they’re just out of town, here in Australia.

From an Australian perspective US states are small. Texas would be one of the smaller states here. The nearest border to me is only 3 and a bit hours away, but go north or west, and you’ll be driving 12 or 13 hours respectively, just to leave the state.

Y'all win on driving distances lol

 

[Luftkopf]

Y'all win on driving distances lol

Australia, aside from Tasmania and an assortment of small islands, is about the same size as the contiguous US states, but is only divided into six states. Also, we pretty much cluster into a few large cities, with very little in between in a lot of places.

 

[whitby]

How do people drive such long distances? Anything more than 2 hours in the UK is an utter trek, best avoided if you can at all.

A rhetorical question I assume. Distances here tend to be much longer and thus make 3 to 5 hour journeys quite common even in the most densely populated parts of the country. Also you get long boring miles on the interstate which rarely happens in the UK (I am a Brit by birth and moved here in my 40s) since journey times can be long by virtue of the traffic, road design and traffic cones (😂) not long stretches of mind numbingly boring motorways/freeways. Until you live here (US) it is difficult to imagine the distances between centers of population here. The US (on average) is around 11 times less densely populated than the UK.

 

[ignatius345]

How do people drive such long distances? Anything more than 2 hours in the UK is an utter trek, best avoided if you can at all.

Cruise control helps, but yeah, it can be a slog. I drove 1600 miles over the holidays late last year. It’s not super uncommon to drive 500+ miles here in the US to go on vacation.

Some of that is that we just don’t have much functioning rail service, and flying becomes much less economical once you have 3 or more people on the trip...