-EasyThoughts- Planning an entertainment on a 24 hour airplane trip

So my whole family and I are planning on long holiday in western civilization. And all I could think off is - how to keep sanity during the 13 + 8 hours airplane trip

I used to own three laptops - one is a children friendly use (for my daughters), one is my wife's work laptop and one is my work laptop. Since we lost all three, so I decided to buy two new laptops for us to use. If you read my previous blog, you know I already own one ROG ASUS laptop - and although it is a gamer oriented laptop, I use it also for work which is quite nice for virtual machine and installing several linux server as cloud server ... but most of the time I use it to fight Raiders and Gunners on Fallout 4.

But that thing weigh too much on my shoulder to carry. It is not that heavy, but with all the stuff I had to carry for my wife and my daughters, it is going to be a sore aching trip to carry that thing around. So I decided to use my other laptop - which is more ... I wanna say sophisticated - it's a New MacBook 12 Retina Display 1.2GHz Intel Core M with 512 Flash storage.

I am not going to promote anything here, just speaking out the fact. So please, before any PC fanboy or Mac fanboy begins to either rant or cheers - let's just read it out.

I am an occasional PC gamer - and I have to tell that using Macbook for gaming is a disastrous experience. At the beginning of my transitioning to use Mac, I find it so confusing and hard - the mice is weird as I can't found secondary button to click, the spec is low for high end gaming, etc. But other than for gaming - like office use for example, this thing is quite comforting. Browsing web, typing stuff, looking at movies and pictures - especially in the new macbook with retina display, it is amazing.

All of that though is not without any disturbance here and there - especially with 12 inch display, though with sharp images and everything, I still find it small to look at even to type at. The USB-C connector, which is one and only connector you have for data transfer and/or power is becoming a nuisance as the reliance on flash disk or external storage is still needed (at least currently).

This and all can be seen at almost every other review - but one concerning me is how well will this macbook work by performing a virtual machine in it. Sharing the processor and memory process might not be great for this mac - so I tried doing the other best thing... is to play games on it :D

I have tried several of my games that I had on my STEAM library, most of them works also in mac, but many others not. Luckily I don't need all games, just some games that will took my thoughts from the flight and into the time consuming entertainment. One of my favorites is Civilization, so I installed Civ V and Civ Beyond Earth. Both runs well and good on this new Mac, but Beyond Earth may be needed more resources to keep the diplomatic animation goes - as it is just stood still as it is during any diplomatic interface.

I looked for other games and decided to install Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. As default, it sets on the lowest setting, but as I pushed it to the highest setting - it runs but not smoothly. But still, 20-30fps is not that bad, as it is just a simulation game - I haven't played it yet, only test running it - the draw distance is not as good, it is borderlining to suckiness. But it still run, the animation and all of it.

I want to say Minecraft next, but instead I install another from my library, which is Cities Skylines - and I gotta say meh... even without any tinkering the setting and all it already run like 10-20fps at most. New landscapes with all car running in the background already consumed the processor and in board GPU - so it may as well not the game of choice for this mac.

And lastly - Borderlands 2, and it runs smooth on lowest setting - and I mean lowest. Still playable, smooth running, 40-50fps, but it is not on a retina display material anymore.

So I guess that is it - macbook for me runs well for you to socialize, browse the web, play movie, write a story. Playing games? still doubtful - but okay enough if you are into low to mid end gaming that requires small amount of your processor memory and gpu process. I am still into Heroes 3 - but not to play repeatedly in a 24 hour flight.

But I am stuck, I had no choice only to make this mac be as much as entertaining to relieve me from boredom. And no, I don't want to write a novel during the flight.