Once again I ‘survived’ a whole week, teaching a Windows Embedded CE 6.0 class. Even though we didn’t use target hardware during this class, all students still had the chance to experiment with Windows CE. They were able to create their own OS Design, modify and extend it, run applications on top of their Windows CE system and even had the possibility to test their system using the CETK. All of this is possible because Windows Embedded CE 6.0 can use the Device Emulator. This emulator can also be used to test Windows Mobile applications on a large range of devices with different form factors without the need to physically own lots of different devices. Even though the emulator cannot be used to measure performance or study hard real-time behavior of Windows CE, it is a great tool for developers. Especially for Windows Mobile developers, the emulator is sufficient to test almost any application. Since the emulator runs ARM code, you don’t even have to recompile your (native) applications in order to run them on a real device. For embedded developers the emulator can be very helpful as well. What if target hardware is not yet available? What if you only have a limited number of target systems available? In all these situations you can start developing targeting the emulator, and at a later stage move on to target hardware. You can even provide a skin for the emulator, so it looks and feels like your target system. With Platform Builder (the development tool to develop Windows CE OS designs that integrates in Visual Studio 2005) it is possible to target different hardware environments with the same OS design by selecting multiple Board Support Packages. This simply means that you can create an OS design for one particular piece of target hardware and exactly the same OS design for another target. Choosing the emulator as one of the targets allows you to start developing without target hardware available, and moving that same OS design to the physical target hardware once it is available. Since the emulator ships with Visual Studio 2005, there is really no excuse not to get started with Windows Embedded CE 6.0. Personally I think that the emulator is a great tool. It definitely helps me being productive and it saves me a lot of money as well, not having to buy lots of different devices.

Maarten Struys