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Microsoft Operating Systems Windows

Microsoft Announces Windows 10X For Dual-Screen PCs (venturebeat.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the marching-forward dept.
Microsoft today announced Windows 10X, a new flavor of Windows 10 designed for dual-screen PCs. Windows 10X will power dual-screen PCs from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and of course Microsoft. From a report: But we won't see them until holiday 2020. Microsoft teased the Surface Neo running Windows 10X at its event today. Lenovo unveiled what it called "the world's first foldable PC" earlier this year. Windows 10X will support devices that have either two different panels with a hinge or one foldable piece of glass. The only requirement is that the device's two screens must each measure more than 9 inches diagonally. Windows 10X devices available next year will come with varying screen sizes, but the smallest will be 9 inches. Dual-screen PCs aside, Microsoft has been working to modularize Windows 10 for years. After all, the company's HoloLens, Surface Hub, and Xbox One all run a form of Windows 10. Adding support for the dual-screen PC form factor into Windows 10 has also been a multi-year journey. Further reading: Microsoft Announces the Surface Duo, a Dual-Screen Android Phone.
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Microsoft Announces Windows 10X For Dual-Screen PCs More

Microsoft Announces Windows 10X For Dual-Screen PCs

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  • How is this different? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @01:09PM (#59261836)

    I've been running Windows 10 on a dual-screen computer all along.

    Granted, there is room for improvement. I do like some of the little touches provided by UltraMon [realtimesoft.com], such as different task bars for each monitor and one-click transfer of full-screen windows between monitors.

    • This is for stuff like the 'Intel twin river' prototypes that have been floating around, or Lenovo Yoga Book sorts of things. So the OS has to be able to cope with you not having a physical keyboard and give you useful things to do with the part of the screen not overlayed with an OSK and so on.

    • How many screens of your computer are touch screens? Are they side-by-side or top-and-bottom? When you snap the keyboard into place on the bottom screen, does the workspace on the bottom screen collapse to a bar analogous to the MacBook Touch Bar? Because that's how the Surface Neo [venturebeat.com] is laid out.

      And does your OS load support for heavyweight desktop APIs in a separate container loaded only on demand, with only Chromium processes and a legacy-free API for battery-sipping, touch-driven apps in memory most of the

    • My thoughts exactly. I have been using Duel screens from Windows XP time. What is really new?
      Me, I would like the ability to assign a separate USB keyboard and Mouse to a different screen.

      I did that with my Mac with parallels decade ago. Where I mapped an external keyboard and mouse to a virtual machine with a separate screen. It was like having two computers side by side, one with Mac and one with Windows. I used my Mac with the Unix features to connect to the legacy mainframe systems, while I did new d

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        Me, I would like the ability to assign a separate USB keyboard and Mouse to a different screen.

        I did that with my Mac with parallels decade ago. Where I mapped an external keyboard and mouse to a virtual machine with a separate screen. It was like having two computers side by side, one with Mac and one with Windows.

        You could probably still do this in Windows like you did on your Mac. I haven't tried so this may or may not work. Set up a virtual machine with Windows on it (like using parallels on your Mac). Then set your main OS to dual screen and set the virtual OS to full screen on the secondary screen. In your virtual Windows set up only enable the USB where a your extra keyboard and mouse is attached.
        The extra keyboard and mouse would still be available in the main Windows but the virtual Windows should only see th

    • I've been running Windows 10 on a dual-screen computer all along.

      I've got three screens running currently on my Win 10 machine. Do I need a new operating system too?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Probably some worthless marketing drone at MS needed to justify their existence....

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Ok, windows illiterate guy here.

    Isn't windows already able to use multiple monitors !? A quick googling tells me that yes. Of course. What would be the point of an OS that would "require" two monitors ? What happens if one of your monitors dies ? Is that OS available to regular people who have vanilla desktop PC with two or more monitors attached ? And again what happens if the customer changes the number of his or her monitors ?

    I knew NVidia castrated their Linux drivers to have "feature parity" with Windo

    • Ok, i get it. It is not for PC. But i still do not get very well what does warrant a name version for this. And why the article suggests multi monitor support has been a struggle on WIN 10 PC.

      • 1. Marketing department, 2. layman interpretation. Which looked at another way there's basically the same answer for both of your questions--layman.

    • I think the main point is the screens would basically be attached in some fixed way, so you could have system support for better making use of the one as one continuous unit...

      Although I'm not sure why you'd need a whole separate version of Windows.

  • Whut? (Score:3)

    by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @01:20PM (#59261904) Journal

    OK, I'm lost here. I'm running Windows 10 with 3 monitors as I type this. In a previous role, I had 4 monitors.

    Why should the OS care how many monitors I have? Let me determine a "primary", and make the virtual real-estate match the physical (left, right, center, etc) - and that's all I need from an OS.

    I think making an OS variant for this is a bad idea.

    • Maybe this is a marketing department trying to get their fingers into things where they shouldn't below, while the engineering department is insisting it's a feature / enhancement and not a new product. Marketing department won, but gave a concession by still calling it Windows 10.

    • Agreed, default settings for devices with a fixed screen layout should do. You could even hide the configuration so people don't change it by accident. Personally I dislike that approach, but for non-technical users it may be appropriate.

      But a separate OS version? Those guys must smoke some bad weed..

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by An0nYm0u5c0wArD ( 6251996 )

      This is for touchscreen PCs.

    • Let me determine a "primary", and make the virtual real-estate match the physical (left, right, center, etc) - and that's all I need from an OS.

      Windows has never been much good at this.

      e.g.: At work I run Windows 10 with three screens, the center screen being "Display 1" and also the screen where the primary task bar (normally) resides. If I RDP into that machine to do something then when I next login on the console the primary task bar is now on the right-hand screen, "Display 3". Here's hoping they'll fix stupid behaviours like this in the mainstream Windows distribution.

  • Wasn't Win10 supposed to be the final version of Windows which would just be updated in perpetuity? Why all this fragmentation for what amounts to a single feature?

  • Clarification (Score:5, Informative)

    by twocows ( 1216842 ) on Wednesday October 02, 2019 @02:09PM (#59262090)
    Windows 10 X is essentially Windows 10 with most of Win32 deactivated by default in order to work well as a tablet OS (if you've heard of Windows Core, it's that). It's primarily designed for running MS Store apps (aka UWP apps), but it can also run Win32 apps on demand in a container (performance won't be as good, but if it's one of those edge case apps you just need to make the thing useful, it does the job). It's not really intended to be a laptop/desktop type device like the Surface, it's closer to an iPad or Android tablet but with Win32 functionality lying dormant to be used if needed. ZDNet has a good writeup: https://www.zdnet.com/article/... [zdnet.com]

    The dual screen thing is just a gimmick for their new tablet and they're touting Windows 10 X's ability to make use of it. I don't think it has anything to do with the core functionality.
  • "two different panels with a hinge or one foldable piece of glass."

    Samsung should get hold of the inventor of foldable glass right away, their foldable plastic sucks.
  • All y'all mofos using Windows with more than one screen are in violation of your EULA. According to the super secret EULA section too secret to publish until now, you have a license to use Windows 10 with only one screen. You can either retroactively purchase a Windows 10X license (for 10 times the retail cost) to keep your ability to access your current account or go to jail and pay a fine equal to the above amount.

  • I've been running 2 -- even 3 screens for awhile off of an HP laptop since I can easily use it's built-in screen and 2 external monitors -- at work for at least the last decade.

    So what do I run at home?

    A single 27" 1440P Dell UltraSharp that basically gives me all of the same real estate of the previous multiple screens and is simply just easier to place and use. You'll always need a big screen for things like large Photoshop images -- even wide spreadsheets aren't as nice split across multiple screens. And

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