This week is has been announced on a number of blogs, and yes, a new version of the Windows CE operating system will be released soon. The product launch will be on November 1st, or exactly one month from now. You can join the launch event from your own desk, since this will be an online event. Make sure to sign up ahead of time. With the arrival of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 we will say goodbye to a number of things. First of all, there will be no separate product any longer to create your OS Designs. With Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Platform Builder will be integrated into Visual Studio 2005. All in all, Platform Builder benefits from this, thanks to Intellisense, a few new editors and a renewed catalog view, combining components that are available in Windows CE with components that are part of your OS Design in one single view. We will also have to say goodbye to a number of limitations. Instead of an addressable address space of 32 MB per process we now have 2 GB available per process. With more powerful applications getting on market this is definitely a huge improvement, especially for those applications that are centered around multi-media functionality. Another limitation is gone as well. Instead of 32 processes that can run at a time, we now have 32000 processes available. With that, Windows Embedded CE 6.0 should be good to go for the next couple of years. Besides these major improvements a lot of work has been done around security of the OS as well. All in all, Windows Embedded CE 6.0 is maturing. Is there only good news then? Well, I should be careful answering this question, but there is one thing I like less. The product now has a new name. For somebody who speaks a lot at conferences, I am not too happy with that new name. It is simply too long. The previous version of Windows CE was simply called Windows CE 5.0. Too bad Microsoft didn’t stick with this name. The new version of the OS is now called Windows Embedded CE 6.0. Not really a name that flows naturally. Of course I will get used to it, like I got used to Windows Vista as well. However, speaking on conferences it is just a waste of words and thus a waste of time. Whenever I am talking about Windows CE I now have to squeeze in a whole new word (Embedded). That will take time, in other words, less time to educate attendees and more time to get the product name right. Of course, I know I am just a little picky here. However, why are marketing people spending much time on making perfectly explaining names longer and almost less intuitive?
Maarten Struys |
