Windows Embedded Compact

This week, Kevin Dallas, General Manager Windows Embedded at Microsoft, confirmed there will be a next version of Windows Embedded Compact, to be released in the second half of 2012. Even though Windows 8 will have ARM support and even though the next version of Windows Embedded Standard will most likely be based upon the Windows 8 bits, having a separate, light weight and hard real-time operating system makes a lot of sense. Especially if you take a look at Kevin’s vision of intelligent systems that are built from different building blocks, amongst which of course also embedded systems with a variety of different footprints and form factors.

The announcement that there will be a Windows Embedded Compact v.next is great news for everybody who is currently working on solution based on Windows Embedded Compact. It means that you can safely continue to invest in knowledge around Windows Embedded Compact. It also means that Windows Embedded Compact will make use of Visual Studio 2010 in its next version and that Windows CE will be amongst us for at least another 15 years, probably even longer.

This is something I really hope will happen one day. Until 2008, Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile developers had their own conference, MEDC. Since that time, Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile developers could find some interesting content at the various Tech-Ed conferences around the world. However, it is of course very different to be part of a larger conference, owning one track with something like 16 breakout sessions, or having your own dedicated conference with perhaps as much as 100 breakout sessions. At Tech-Ed, it seems that Windows Embedded presence is getting smaller and smaller. Of course the mobile arena has changed a lot over the last 2 .. 3 years. Windows Mobile has been rebranded to Windows Embedded Handheld. Apart from that, Windows Phone, being a brand new platform has been released. Windows Phone technical content has been presented at MIX and at Tech-Ed over the last two years. Windows Phone will also at least be present at the brand new Build Conference later this month.

So what about Windows Embedded in all its flavors? Some time ago, there was an intriguing pre-announcement here at the Windows Embedded website. The information about a possible new embedded developer conference is still there. However, I was just looking at the listed twitter feed for updates around this conference, but I didn’t find any updates. Hopefully this announcement was not just a teaser. I think it would be great if there would be another large scale developer conference, organized by Microsoft and dedicated to Windows Embedded technologies. To make my dream even better …. It would be great if Windows Phone would be present at such a conference as well, after all, Windows Phone runs on one of the Windows Embedded Operating Systems.

Until a few months ago, Windows Embedded Compact was better known under its ‘real’ name, being Windows CE. Even though I don’t want to get deeper into the whole naming conventions of this particular operating system, I want to write about it. So this blog will contain entries about Windows Embedded Compact 7 in several categories. You will find entries about creating OS design’s, but also entries about developing applications that run on Windows Embedded Compact 7, as well as articles around creating cool  new graphical user interfaces using Silverlight for Windows Embedded. You might even find the occasional invitation to attend a class that I am teaching. Hopefully you will enjoy this blog. Stay tuned because more is to come soon.