Microsoft Makes Surprise CE 6 Release 145
An anonymous reader writes "Unexpectedly, Microsoft has released a beta of Windows CE 6, at its mobile developer's conference (MEDC) this week. CE is the real-time OS that underpins Windows Mobile and Microsoft's other device software stacks for phones, PDAs, set-top boxes, and the like. CE 6 looks to be a major rewrite, featuring the capability to support several orders of magnitude more concurrent processes and virtual memory. Also new is support for MS's .NET IDE. Together, these new capabilities seem calculated to morph CE from a closed-box, off-the-shelf OS into a more customizable OS."
Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
Hardly Closed (Score:5, Informative)
CE is hardly closed and not really "off the shelf". For starters the source code for the OS is available as part of the platform builder tool. Also, the platform builder tool allows you to create releases of windows CE with different configurations, drivers and applications pre-isntalled. It is the equavlent of being about to build a custom image of windows XP, sans the explorer GUI interface (Desktop), or other system services such as RDP. The only problem is that CE looks about as old as it is, it will be nice to have a UI update. It is also the only OS that MS makes that is a "hard" real time OS and whose kernel does not provide GUI services. CE is also currently suported by VS.NET 2005, though not on the native C++ side. However,
Another move on the handheld/phone market (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/08/microsoft
Microsoft and Qualcom wish to make common cause against Nokia -Qualcom due to CDMA and Microsoft due to Symbian OS and mobile Linux. Microsoft has had difficulty in getting any major manufacturer to use their platform on phones due to manufacturer's rightful fears of being commoditized as PC makers have been.
-that said, they're both bastards and the success of this venture will lead to more microsoft lockin.
-What's the speed of dark?
I hate to admit it, but... (Score:5, Informative)
After some research and discussion, I was dishearted to find that the navigation systems I had grown to love so much were actually powered by Windows Automotive Edition [microsoft.com] - based on Windows Embedded, which is a flavor of Windows CE. While I cannot actually tell (by any means) that the system is Windows-based, it is very stable, responsive, fast, and user friendly - most of which is probably of function of the application and not the operating system.
All that said, I'm still psyched about CE 6 if it provides further media access features, hardware drivers, and other niceitys.
I have real pain saying I'm psyched about a Windows product as a Linux and Mac OS geek!
Re:Windows CE realtime? (Score:5, Informative)
Realtime has absolutely nothing to do with the relative speed of the OS or GUI. What it means is that the OS can *guarantee* a response to an input within a defined period of time. While that time is typically very short, you could still technically be realtime if you could demonstrate guaranteed response within 24 hours (though you wouldn't be particularly useful).
Again, technically that's "hard" realtime. "Soft" realtime system are just pretenders that can't really guarantee anything and just look kinda like a preemptive OS with priority levels and the like.
Linux is not a realtime system (without very specific extensions anyway). You don't really want a general purpose OS as "realtime" anyway - it just doesn't help things at all and tends to complicate the processing model.
CE 5.0 (and probably 6.0) are not hard realtime systems. Even at the OEM level (where you can actually write real ISRs) there's no guaranteed response time, just a bunch of realtime looking stuff. At the Application Developer, or even Device Driver level (ISTs, not ISRs) you are so far from realtime it really doesn't make much sense to talk about it in those terms.
If you read between the lines on this [microsoft.com] report from Microsoft you can glean most of what I've said.
Correction regarding IDE (Score:5, Informative)
"Also new is support for MS's
Windows CE is already supported by VS.NET 2005. And I don't just mean for
Re:Windows CE realtime? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Windows CE realtime? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I hate to admit it, but... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jan
Re:Hardly Closed (Score:1, Informative)
lol, you must know more than Microsoft. Even they themselve don't claim that...
Also, only PART of the source code is available, not 100%.
Win CE != Windows Mobile (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hardly Closed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Windows CE realtime? (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that you can't wait on stuff for too long adds a whole bunch of complexity to your processing - mainly in the error handling and timeout handling code where you have to decide how to handle errors in what is very likely an unattended environment.
Re:Several orders of magnitude? (Score:2, Informative)