“Most people know of the Microsoft Windows range for the home which includes Windows 95, 98, 98 Second Edition, Millennium Edition (also know as ME) and the two XP’s – Home and Pro. There are though a couple out there that not so many have heard of. Probably the better known of the two is Windows CE which is used on the majority of the PDA’s on the market at the moment. The other one is Windows XP Embedded.” Read the article at ActiveWin.
Microsoft Windows XP Embedded & Windows CE – What Is It All About?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Windows 2000 must surely feel left out not being included in that little list of yours
I thought it’s called Pocket PC 2002, nowadays. Well, who cares.
>Well, who cares.
Cut the sarcastic bullshit or you will see your comment moderated down too. The “well, who cares” part was NOT needed.
I have tolerated people a lot over the past year regarding their sarcastic/bitter or even trolled comments on our Windows/Microsoft articles. I will NOT tolerate anyone anymore.
Do the **smallest** shitty comment and you will see your comment moderated down in an instant. Yes, I know that I am being too harsh, but I have _NO_ patience anymore. I spent it all over the last year.
I decided that I will not be replying anymore on the comments section, unless there is a fair direct question to me that needs replying.
So, be on topic, be polite and be fair to the news story and the editors of each story. Make a comment if you have something useful to say or ask. Otherwise, you will see your comments moderated down with NO explanation. I will shoot them down like ducks. Promise.
Edit: More info here: http://www.osnews.com/moderation.php?news_id=1909#44459
I had an interesting conversation with whom I believe to be the lead on the XP Embeded project. He was telling me how they are breaking up XP into components that can be reassembled into various iterations to be used in a *wide* variety of devices.
Some of the things were, I kid you not, gambling devices, Point of Sale, Weapons guidance systems, flight controllers, etc. He seemed to think the sky was basically the limit as to where these XP component OS’s could go.
Interesting none the less. Imagine a BSOD when firing that missle, or winning the jackpot in Vegas!
LOL!
Having used WinCE a bit on Thin Clients (Compaq T1010/T20), has any one had any experience with WinNTe (The embedded version of NT 4)…
Microsoft also holds a number of free seminars on embedding XP and CE. Have to admit that their kits are *really* easy to use and can get a company up and running with an embedded system in a few days – without a lot of knowledge about the OS (as opposed to embedding Linux which has a steeper learning curve) One glaring piece of info missing from these types of articles – license costs: $15/copy of CE .net, ~$80 for XP (cheaper than a retail version of XP, huh?).
How fast(loading times) are Pocket Pcs anyways? I have a palm which at 16mhz completely outpaces my Zaurus running at 200+ Mhz. Everything is just sluggish and now has a loading time. Are the Memo and datebook programs instant on in the pocket pc world? I have the suspicion that the Zaurus got its speed problems from copying Packet PCs.
Well, making the Windows embedded is mostly a matter of taking things out of the OS, like GDI and USER kernel modules, the login processes, DirectX, keyboard/mouse/graphics/printer drivers, Win16 compatibility layer, maybe the security stuff (depending on the application), and a lot more. Then the customer or third party can add in device drivers for their specialized devices.
Oh yeah, Internet Explorer and the Explorer shell usually have to be taken out too. I was going to make some remark but I’ll leave it at that.
Sunyata, they’ve been using Embedded Windows in many devices for a long time, especially Point of Sale… ever seen the self-checkout registers from NCR?
stahbird: In reguard to that comment that you “left out”, Microsoft has only said that many things depend on Internet Explorer, such as the Explorer shell itself, and even 3rd party developers… with Embedded XP, you can take that stuff out because you KNOW exactly what the device is going to be used for, and you KNOW that you will (or will not) use them.
As for the Explorer shell, Microsoft has never said anything about it other than telling the OEMs that they have to use Explorer as per the contract, so when a user turns on his computer, he/she knows how to use what is coming up every time….. now of course, you can always change ths shell yourself.
Anon:
Personally, I’ve upgraded my H3150 (which is a B/W version of the iPaq) to PocketPC 2002, it takes a couple of miliseconds longer to do certain things, sometimes, as the processor in isn’t as powerful as other PocketPC’s (as my PocketPC wasn’t designed for PocketPC 2002), but for the most part, things are instantaneous.
CPUGuy:
That’s a good explanation, but Microsoft could fix that by offering (for example) the following registry convention:
Software
.. FooCompany
…..BarProduct
…….Requires
……….Microsoft Internet Explorer
………….version 5.5
FooCompany would need to add this to its installer. If the user tries to launch BarProduct, Windows would put up the message box “This product requires Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.5 or later”.
This mechanism would have lots of uses besides allowing MS to remove Explorer.
Hanul, Pocket PC was the name given to Windows CE on ARM. Why? Because it broke all binary and source compatiblity with previous versions. The next version BTW, would be Windows CE .NET.
The problem is with current apps. Current apps won’t do this… no….
BUt future apps also might not do this because of keeping compatiblity with old versions of Windows…
Besides, I see absolutely no point whatsoever in removing IE just because Netscape was ran by some people who should never be businessmen….
CPUGuy:
Yeah, very true, but this guy was acting like it was the bees knees ya know? In that microsoft fashion. It really seems cool, the guy I heard rapping about it. He has had a long history in Operating systems technology, and for him it is the best thing since pre-sliced bread. Most folks from MS I have met feel that way, and often on the technical whitepaper level it all seems great. It just when it gets executed it seems to me somethign gets lost in the translation.
You mean those CE “enabled” devices that don’t boot properly and it takes ten minutes for your order to be taken? Argue overreliance to the appliance, sure, but don’t give me a wagnerian spiel about how great something is, when it’s use has caused a considerable degree of disconternation at the numerous delays and terrorizing fear of ahnialation if somehow there’s a glitch in CE and somehow, we start WW3.
It’s not a pretty sight, kids, looking at it from the be side of the street.
As for Eugenia? You go girl!
As for people with “trawling occupations”<ahem>
Don’t mess with the bosslady or you’ll find yourself demodded in ways you’ve never concieved. No threats. I am one for sure who knows what side of the street she came from.
And, please, don’t freak out if there is a story about BeOS, or “Microsoft and Gentoo linux merger”. Dead Os?
Last time I checked, there is no dead OS’s that eugenia reports on.. I mean, she doesn’t report on Tandy model 6000’s with Xenix 3.2(ok, so I could have thrown a hard one in there, sue me lol)
fin
Technical merit aside, there’s a serious obstacle with using MS products for mission critical stuff (regardless of your mission) if they continue to write clauses in to the license like the recent MS may alter the software on the box at any time without further consent. This hasn’t really broken for mobile devices yet, but as they become more and more connected, and start handling more media in particular, the DRM side of things are bound to kick in, IMO.
If you want to bargain with MS, you’re going to have to be a pretty big company.
There is some interesting traffic on comp.risks at the moment about how this is affecting hospitals in the USA currently – where they can’t legally accept the new terms, nor can they legally not apply the service pack. That they modify their licenses for a commercial product is up to them, but that they roll the change in with security updates (as with the previous Media Player upgrade) is highly dodgy.
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.29.html#subj2
Um, sorry, the “well, who cares” part wasn’t intended to bash Microsoft or insult you. I like your articles a lot and I’m a daily reader of OSnews. I ran a Windows XP box and I like it a lot. I have also systems with MacOS X, Linux and QNX on it, being an OS junkie myself. I think Microsoft offers some nice software recently, but sometimes I don’t get their naming schemes. I mean “CE” doesn’t mean anything and so doesn’t “NT” (no, it is not “New Technology”). “Pocket PC 2002” is a bad name for an operating system, that’s what I wanted to say.
[Quote]
Some of the things were, I kid you not, gambling devices, Point of Sale, Weapons guidance systems, flight controllers,
etc. He seemed to think the sky was basically the limit as to where these XP component OS’s could go.
[Unquote]
Isn’t there a thing in the installer splash screen that says Windows shouldn’t be used for mission critical things – of which one specific example was weapons systems. I know there was in NT4….
I’ve been waiting for it to come out of beta. When I first heard that MS was going to standardize and make StrongARM the standard CPU in PocketPC’s, I was releived because I was getting sick of recompiling and testing on 3 different CPUs. I’d like to see the .Net redistributable available for older PocketPC’s too, and it would take care of the variation issue.
Unless they hook you up with the world’s biggest Beowulf cluster, they can’t enforce DRM on your media files. Only on DRM-enabled media. And DRM-enabled software.