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Microsoft Rolls Out CE 6
Baby Windows Grows Up
Eclipsing all Others
Socialized Software IDE Makes it Big
Innovation Big and Small - Chapter 2
Bucking the Trend
Innovation Big and Small - Chapter 1
The Adventures of Chuck & Roger
Death of the Hardware Engineer
A Dirge for the Digital Designer
ESC Revisited
Connecting Dots in the Chaos

JOURNAL WEBCASTS

Microsoft Rolls Out CE 6
Baby Windows Grows Up

My first encounter with Windows CE was about a decade ago on a dreadful little device called the HP 600 series palmtop. The whole affair was something of an artist's rendering of a mockup of what a converged personal digital assistant might someday look like – in a world where people plug their palmtops into phone jacks and use dial-up internet in order to stay connected on the road while blazing through airport lounges. The CE part of it was nice enough, though. It was a cute little embedded OS that kinda' looked like Windows, only smaller and without any of the features.

Well, it's been ten years and five versions since then, and baby Windows has busted out of the car seat, learned to walk and talk, and is now kickin' some serious butt in school. At the MEDC (Microsoft Embedded Developer's Conference) last week, Microsoft announced the beta version 6 of CE. Over the course of the decade, the demands on embedded RTOS for mobile devices has exploded with wireless connectivity, more complex applications, data-intensive functions such as image, audio, and video, and more client-server type services.

The new version of CE is clearly working to keep pace with those demands, as well as maintaining its competitiveness in the face of increasing pressure from open-source and royalty-free rebels such as embedded Linux and Nucleus. Microsoft says that the improved capabilities of CE 6 will be particularly useful in applications like set-top boxes, GPS, and industrial automation – all of which push the limits of embedded OS design.
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