More Mobile: Trying the OS Alternatives (Premium)

I’ve been thinking a lot about Windows alternatives lately. And so have you, based on the questions and comments I receive. And sitting here the other day, using my latest “More Mobile” computing setup—a Microsoft Surface Pro 8 connected to an HP Conferencing Monitor with its unique 75 Hz refresh rate and built-in USB hub capabilities—-a thought occurred. How might the major platform alternatives to Windows—Mac, Chromebook, and Linux—-handle this use case?

Mostly pretty well, as it turns out.

That said, I don’t believe this particular configuration is ideal for anything but Windows: the HP Conferencing Monitor, for example, has firmware that needs to be updated, and I’m pretty sure that’s only available in Windows. But given how well each platform worked with the display and its USB hub, I suspect a more typical setup with a standalone USB-C hub and an external dumb display, would work just fine.

Anyway. Here’s what I found.

Mac

When my issues with Windows lead me to a dark place, as they do from time to time, it’s always the Mac that makes the most sense, at least on paper. This platform is used by tens of millions of people, is regularly updated and supported by Apple, has all of the major applications I need and want, and even supports native OneDrive integration with the file system. What’s not to love?

Well, lots of little things, in my case. And every single time I turn to the Mac, I’m quickly reminded of these things and how much they annoy me. This article isn’t about that topic, but let me give you just one example: if you have multiple browser windows open on Windows, Chrome OS, or Linux, you can switch between them using the ALT + TAB keyboard shortcut. But on the Mac, you cannot; instead, you can only switch to the application and then use a different keyboard shortcut to switch between the different windows in the application. Grr…

My issues with macOS aside, the Mac—an entry-level M1-based MacBook Pro—-immediately connected to the HP Conferencing Monitor at 75 Hz and had no issues using any of its connected peripherals.

Which, to be fair, introduced me to a new issue I didn’t know I had with macOS. Which is that I configure it a certain way when used normally, with just the internal display—-where most apps are run full-screen and I hide the menu bar at the top and the dock at the bottom—-and this configuration is not in any way ideal when using the system with an external display. If there’s a way to configure it uniquely for each setup, I haven’t found it.

(I also ended up reversing scrolling for the mouse. I am OK with how the Mac scrolls with its trackpad, but for some reason, I prefer it the other way with a mouse. This isn’t a big deal since you can configure the mouse and trackpad separately.)

Chrome OS

To test Chrome OS, I used an HP Chromebook c1030 Enterprise, which I keep around because it offers the full Chrome OS experience, with high-end specs, a convertible form factor, and compatibility with Android, Linux, and even Windows via Parallels Desktop. Those features somewhat help Chrome OS overcome its biggest problems—-its inherent functional limitations and missing key apps—but not entirely.

This Chromebook also has its power button out on its left side, which means it’s accessible even when the display lid is closed. So I just plugged in the USB-C cable from the HP Conferencing Monitor and pressed the Chromebook’s power button to see what happened.

… And what happened is that the Chromebook powered on and used the external display and connected peripherals automatically. The keyboard and mouse worked automatically, and even the display’s built-in camera worked, though the quality was a bit grainy. The display outputted at 60 Hz, but I could change it to 75 Hz in Settings. nice.

The one thing I did lose, however, was the Chromebook’s fingerprint reader, though that would be accessible if I left its internal display open. That’s not a Chrome OS issue, of course. (I likewise lose access to the Surface Pro 8’s Windows Hello facial recognition when the cover is on.)

Linux

Testing Linux with the HP Conferencing Monitor was a little more complicated because the PC I finally settled on for my Linux work—-an HP Envy 15 laptop—-has a large, non-USB-C power adapter. So I couldn’t achieve the single-cable setup I like with this particular PC. No big deal.

I was surprised when the Linux sign-in screen displayed on the HP Conferencing Monitor when I plugged in its USB cable, mostly because I hadn’t powered on the laptop manually or even raised the display lid. But something wasn’t quite right, so I opened the display lid, configured it manually to just use the second display, and all was well.

Less ideal, the version of Linux I’m testing—-Zorin OS—has a goofy way of handling display scaling. By default, it supports just 100 and 200 percent scaling—on both its internal display and the HP Conferencing Monitor—and, as Goldilocks would agree, 100 percent is too small and 200 percent is too big. But you can enable a fractional scaling option that enables interim scaling modes like 125 percent, 150 percent, and so on. And so that’s what I’ve done on the laptop and it works well.

It does not work well on the HP Conferencing Monitor, however. In fact, one might argue that it does not work at all: When using any fractional display scaling value, the mouse pointer is offset from its real location onscreen, making it hard to select items and perform various actions. After a lot of fiddling around, I finally got it back to 100 percent scaling and gave up. (Like Chrome OS, I was able to enable a 75 Hz display refresh rate, though it defaulted to 60.)

I’ll continue testing and will write more about Zorin OS soon. But this experience makes me curious about using an external display, whether it’s directly connected or via a USB-C hub. So I will be looking at that specifically.

Final thoughts

Each of these other platforms handled this configuration in mostly positive ways, but none are as seamless and full-featured as Windows. And while that’s just one data point, it’s also maybe a nice reminder that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. Whatever issues you or I may have with Windows 11 in particular, this setup was designed specifically to work with Windows, and it does work well.

For the most part.

One weird issue I do have with the Surface Pro 8 and the HP Conferencing Monitor is that a feature called smart charging prevents the PC’s battery from charging past 80 percent. When you Google this, you will find Windows 11- and Surface-specific “fixes” for this problem. But neither is permanent: you can configure it to charge to 100 percent in the Surface app, but this only “pauses” smart charging and it will eventually just go back. That you cannot disable this permanently seems less than smart to me. Let me know if there’s something I’m missing.