- #Microsoft display dock for continuum full#
- #Microsoft display dock for continuum windows 10#
- #Microsoft display dock for continuum portable#
What this would mean for me is that I could plug my phone in to get the Continuum PC like experience, then start a remote desktop session to one of my development machines and start coding with very much the same experience I would have on a beefy laptop. This is epic, as my development machines are all virtual (some on premises at the office and others in Azure). The real light bulb moment happened during a conversation when it was mentioned that a remote desktop app that supported Continuum was not only in the pipeline but I was able to get a demonstration. The phone (via the dock) is capable of driving a single HDMI display and apps scale up to use a high resolution on the external monitor. This is the bit that the sceptic in me initially thought great feature, but who’s going to build the apps to support it. The Continuum magic is only supported by the new Universal Windows Apps (primarily Microsoft Apps to start with, e.g. The experience on the phone (start screen, calls etc) remains completely independent of the PC-like experience on the external display. A chance conversation at Microsoft Ignite Australia has changed my opinion and got me excited again.Ĭontinuum for Windows phones lets you turn your phone into a PC-like experience by connecting an external display, keyboard, and mouse using the new Microsoft Display Dock. But the sceptic inside me kept nagging at me that it’s probably going to be more gimmick than substance.
#Microsoft display dock for continuum portable#
If nothing else just throw it in your laptop bag – it’s still cool to use as an extremely portable dock.Being a Windows Phone user I was pretty excited when the Continuum feature started getting demonstrated.
#Microsoft display dock for continuum windows 10#
So don’t throw away your little old friend just yet, give him a try with your Windows 10 laptop – he might be your desktop friend once again. Windows 10 detects the dock correctly and provides you with the same output to a second 1920×1080 monitor as you’d expect (extend/duplicate), along with 3 extra USB ports. I was rummaging around a box of cables the other day and came across this old Microsoft dock and thought – this still looks like a pretty cool piece of tech, I wonder if this thing still has any uses? I gave it power, hooked it up to an HDMI monitor, grabbed a Dell Latitude 7280 with a USB-C connector and connected up the dock – lo and behold, it works!Īll of the technical specs for the Microsoft Display Dock say it’s compatible only with certain Lumia devices, but it seems it’s quite happy to function as a dock/port-replicator for modern Windows 10 devices too. My desk setup nowadays is a Lenovo P50 laptop/workstation connected to a couple of 24″ QHD Dell monitors via a Dell Universal Display Dock, it works well. Cool tech! Sadly, as Microsoft failed to make an impact in the phone market we all pretty much moved to Android or iOS – which consigned the phone and the dock to storage.
#Microsoft display dock for continuum full#
It was supplied with a Microsoft Display Dock (HD-500), which you could hook up to the Lumia Phone, a Wireless Keyboard and Mouse and start using it as a mini Win10 desktop on a full screen monitor. I went through the phase of owning a Microsoft/Lumia 950 phone, it wasn’t a bad phone at all but it was let down with application support.