[chocochunks]

Yeah, but that USB 3 port has to do a lot of heavy lifting. It 's also the only video out port making decent dongles a necessity. On a $600 PC it's not uncommon to have USB A (at 3.0 speeds), HDMI in addition to USB C and maybe even Ethernet.

[Gigachad]

>making decent dongles a necessity

I used a macbook air all throughout school, I never once owned a dongle or even plugged the thing in to an external monitor. My requirements were something that could run photoshop/illustrator and chrome. If I ever transfered something over USB it was a 300kb docx file or something else that would have copied instantly at 2.0 speeds.

I think there's a huge problem of tech enthusiasts projecting their own requirements on to a device that is designed for a very different person, and then declaring it unfit for use. Apple prioritized things that actually matter to students like battery life, lightness, price, and hinges that don't snap after the first year. Rather than tons of super fast IO and 32gb ram.

[chocochunks]

I went to school too. Sometimes at school we would do presentations using a projector connected by HDMI, maybe you could get away with the room computer but that only had USB A ports being some ancient desktop. Sometimes we did group projects and rather than huddle around one tiny 13" or 15" laptop screen we used one of the big ass TVs in the rentable group study rooms.

It's not tons of super fast IO. It's pretty basic IO.

[Gigachad]

Even then the problem can be solved by a cheap usb a + c flash drive. At least in offices every meeting room I’ve used for a while now has a usb c dongle for the TV.

HDMI has been less common than usb c on laptops for quite a long time now.

[comex]

Also, a large fraction of students these days use Google Docs. I don’t have first-hand experience, but I imagine they would either share presentations with the account the shared computer is logged into, or log into their own account on the shared computer. No hardware involved either way.

[giantrobot]

A multi-port USB-C hub is about ten dollars on Amazon. If a Neo owner really needs additional ports they're a few bucks. For a vast majority of Neo owners the lack of ports is a non-issue and for the others that occasionally need the extra ports they're cheap.

I doubt there's many Neo buyers that really needed multiple Thunderbolt ports but decided to pick up the $600 entry level machine instead.

[happyopossum]

> On a $600 PC

Yes, but it is uncommon for a $600 PC to have a beautiful screen, great trackpad, metal case, and top notch build quality. Also, the neo performs really really well.

[grey-area]

This cheap laptop is not for people with external displays. Almost everyone buying this would have no desire for an external display, they wouldn’t even feel this as a limitation.

If you want a separate display or super fast data transfers, more usb ports or more than 8MB of RAM buy one of the more expensive laptops.

[kube-system]

The 2020 MBP wasn't much better in terms of IO and it was wildly successful as a $1200+ laptop.

I suspect the majority of $600 laptops live their entire functional life without anyone plugging anything other than a charger into them.