Microsoft’s Windows 10 is popular enough on the desktop but doesn’t have much traction in its mobile/phone variety. One feature that promises to bridge the gap is the Continuum mode on some Windows 10 phones, which allows plugging in an external monitor (and optionally a keyboard/mouse) to get a PC-like interface. There are unfortunately a lot of rough edges in this mode which make it awkward to use.

Hardware required

Only some Windows 10 phones support Continuum; I’ve tested with a Lumia 950. Connecting to a monitor requires either an external dock widget (which provides HDMI/DisplayPort/USB-A ports and power over USB-C) or local-network streaming to a Windows 10 PC (a configuration I haven’t tested; I think it requires the Windows 10 Anniversary update).

If physical mouse and keyboard aren’t available, the phone’s touchscreen can be used as a trackpad and on-screen keyboard.

Theory

Because the Windows 10 “Universal Windows Platform” provides a common base between Windows variants for PC, mobile, game console, etc, an application written for UWP can be built & distributed once (as long as the differences in the UI are taken into account) and installed/run on all these various different form factors.

The “Continuum” mode in Windows 10 Mobile for phones allows the same device to run both the phone interface and the PC interface on different screens, with the locally installed apps able to run on either and pick their UI layout appropriately. Thus, you can use your phone like a tiny PC when ‘docked’ at home or at the office, then just unplug it on the go and use it as a phone: locally-stored data and installed apps are available in both modes.

Practice

There are three major problem areas: compatibility, performance, and UI.

Compatibility

First the big one: only Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform apps will work; just like the old “Windows RT” ARM edition of Windows 8, existing desktop apps are a no-go. This is an inherent limitation of the platform, and Microsoft’s bet is that developers will migrate to UWP for its various benefits. But that doesn’t help if you want to run something today that’s not available as a UWP app.

And of course, if the app isn’t pure .NET or HTML/JS, the developer will have to make sure they build it for ARM as well as x86/x64 – and it has to provide a phone interface to be installed, even if you only want to use it in Continuum mode.

Some phone apps don’t work in Continuum mode, including but not only legacy apps from Windows Phone 8. These can still be launched from the Start Menu or links from other apps, but will launch on the phone screen.

Performance

Phones are way beefier microcomputers than they used to be, but they’re still generally much slower and have less memory available than a PC. Complex web apps like Gmail or Facebook may run slower in Edge than you expect.

The Lumia 950 with the Microsoft display dock seems to be limited to 1920x1080 resolution, producing blurry or blocky output on a 4K Ultra-HD monitor compared to what a ‘real’ PC can do.

UI

The Continuum mode looks similar to the “tablet mode” on Windows 10 for PCs, but not exactly. Several major annoyances:

• Typeahead search doesn’t work as expected in the Start menu. I’m very used to hitting the Windows key then typing in ‘edge’ or ‘twitter’ or ‘powershell’ or whatever and hitting enter to launch – in Continuum, after launching the Start menu you must click into ‘All apps’ then click into the search box, and then you can start typing.
• No side-by-side apps on the external screen. On PCs and tablets you can click-n-drag an app to one side, then run another app on the other side. There is no way to do this in Continuum mode, which is especially wasteful given that external monitors tend to be 16:9 widescreen, which works great with side-by-side apps. (You can run a second app on the phone screen, as long as you’re not using the phone as a trackpad, but that’s not really what I want.)
• No mouse/trackpad speed control in Settings. The only mouse option available is left/right primary button; there’s no acceleration option so if your mouse cursor moves very slowly, you have to just deal with it.

Comparisons and competition

Some years before Windows 10, Canonical advertised a similar “use your phone as a PC” ability with a planned product “Ubuntu for Android”. This never really materialized, but the Ubuntu for Phones/Tablets that has come out (with a few products not widely used) does have some abilities to plug in a mouse/keyboard, and can even switch to a windowed mode unlike Windows 10’s Continuum which is full-screen only.

Conclusion

There’s some great ideas in there, and what works is technically impressive, but the edges are too rough for me to use on a regular basis… Even if the UI problems get cleared up, you have all the limitations of Windows 10 Mobile and few of the advantages of Windows 10 for PCs.

Tidy Cats Lightweight litter is light as advertised, but clumps and absorbs poorly in the litterbox. The dust also sticks to my cats’ paws like glue, forming little dry clumps they have trouble removing themselves through regular grooming.

I recommend avoiding this product line.

Last year (circa September 2015) I got two Dell P2415Q 24″ Ultra-HD monitors, replacing my old and broken 1080p monitor, to use with my MacBook Pro. Since the model’s still available, thought I’d finally post my experience.

tl;dr:

• Picture quality: great
• Price: good for what you get and they’re cheaper now than they were last year.
• Functionality: mixed; some problems that need workarounds for me.

So first the good: the P2415Q is the “right size, right resolution” for me; with an operating system such as Mac OS X, Windows 10, or some Linux environments that handle 200% display scaling correctly, it feels like a 24″ 1080p monitor that shows much, much sharper text and images. When using the external monitors with my 13″ MacBook Pro, the display density is about the same as the internal display and the color reproduction seems consistent enough to my untrained eye that it’s not distracting to move windows between the laptop and external screens.

Two side by side plus the laptop makes for a vveerryy wwiiddee desktop, which can be very nice when developing & testing stuff since I’ve got chat, documentation, terminal, code, browser window, and debugger all visible at once. 🙂

The monitor accepts DisplayPort input via either full-size or mini, and also accepts HDMI (limited to 30 Hz at the full resolution, or full 60Hz at 1080p) which makes it possible to hook up random devices like phones and game consoles.

There is also an included USB hub capability, which works well enough but the ports are awkward to reach.

The bad: there are three major pain points for me, in reducing order of WTF:

1. Sometimes the display goes black when using DisplayPort; the only way to resolve it seems to be to disconnect the power and hard-reset the monitor. Unplugging and replugging the DisplayPort cable has no effect. Switching cables has no effect. Rebooting computer has no effect. Switching the monitor’s power on and off has no effect. Have to reach back and yank out the power.
2. There are neither speakers nor audio passthrough connectors, but when connecting over HDMI devices like game consoles and phones will attempt to route audio to the monitor, sending all your audio down a black hole. Workaround is to manually re-route audio back to default or attach a USB audio output path to the connected device.
3. Even though the monitor can tell if there’s something connected to each input or not, it won’t automatically switch to the only active input. After unplugging my MacBook from the DisplayPort and plugging a tablet in over HDMI, I still have to bring up the on-screen menu and switch inputs.

The first problem is so severe it can make the unit appear dead, but is easily worked around. The second and third may or may not bother you depending on your needs.

So, happy enough to use em but there’s real early adopter pain in this particular model monitor.