[dsl]

> A keyboard backlight is such a cheap and useful addition to a keyboard

Useless LEDs that burn battery budget.

The thing everyone seems to be missing is this isn't a laptop for you or me. It is to compete with Chromebooks in the educational market, and to have a SKU to sell in developing countries.

[kulahan]

Thank goodness they removed this fantastic thing everyone wants to give you an extra fourteen seconds of use time per battery charge. Come on man.

As for the importance of it, if you want to give these to kids, you should have something more rugged, more replaceable, and more built for all kinds of environments (including kids who don’t have a conveniently well-lit place to focus on schoolwork at home).

A large school could have thousands upon thousands of broken Chromebooks waiting to be shipped off - literally multiple pallets. I’ve seen it more than once. Absolutely nobody is begging for an unrepairable, unexpandable, more-expensive version of what they all already have. It’s garbage for school, dead out of the gate.

[NikolaNovak]

>> fantastic thing everyone wants

I wouldn't normally comment on such stuff as it's clearly a personal preference, but just to underline that it is in fact a preference vs everyone, I have used keyboard lighting exactly once in the ~decade it's been available to me. On a laptop with predictable keyboard, it genuinely doesn't matter to me.

(On a laptop with unpredictable keyboard, light is mitigating, not fixing the problem :)

[cardanome]

Why do you need to see your keyboard?

Touch typing is a useful skill for everyone to have and doesn't take long to acquire.

Not to mention even the light of the display should be enough for you to be able to read the key caps if you really need to. Keyboard backlight seems like a gimmick with limited use to me. I always thought it was purely aesthetic.

[xp84]

You're sitting back in a chair watching YouTube in the dark. Hit F for fullscreen. (OK, that was the easy level because of the key bump.) Now hit L to skip 10 seconds forward. Now hit < and > to adjust speed.

The backlighting is useful. But no, it's not for typing, for most people.

[cardanome]

I don't have a habit of sitting in the dark.

Also I don't understand what would be hard about your challenge. My hands automatically move to the home row, feel the key bumps and I instantly know where every key is. I never need to look at my keyboard. Not to mention having to move my eyes down from the displays would be annoying.

I mean people like backlight keyboards. So if it fits your use case great. Still makes sense to not include in a base model. I actually actively avoid keyboards with any lightning.

[xp84]

Congratulations on your keyboard superiority. I was just explaining why mere mortals like myself like backlight.

[kulahan]

The fact that one in ten million people is annoyed by one of the softest lights ever invented by mankind is not a good reason to not include said feature in a product my guy.

[kulahan]

Most people don’t have the touch typing skill and do not care to learn it. It literally matters zero per cent if they would benefit from learning that.

[estomagordo]

"everyone wants"? I am not even sure I understand the utility. Typing in the dark? For, idk, living in a cave?

[KingMob]

14 seconds? Lights are expensive when to comes to batteries.

[port11]

Isn’t the iPad already competing in these segments? Because unless reality has changed dramatically, this is still fairly pricey and a full-fledged laptop that doesn’t make for direct competition with Chromebooks.

Even in my home country of Portugal 700€ is a lot to throw at a ‘laptop’ that will be somewhat obsolete in 3–4 years, assuming Apple continues the trend of graphics-intense, memory hungry OS releases. An iPad seems like a better candidate for students or those on a budget.

I’m actually not sure who the Neo is for. Unless it’s a 3-model trick to price the Air upwards.