Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft® Windows® CE is a 32-bit, multitasking, multithreaded operating system that has an open architecture design that enables a variety of devices. Windows CE is compact, providing high performance in low-memory conditions, and scalable, allowing for future support of a range of embedded, mobile or multimedia product lines. Windows CE has the advantage of being portable, providing choice in microprocessors, and has unobtrusive power management, enabling long battery life on mobile devices. Standard communications support is built into Windows CE, enabling access to the Internet to send and receive e-mail or browse the World Wide Web. In addition, the familiar Windows user interface facilitates ease of use for the end user.
No. Windows CE is designed to enable a whole new class of nontraditional PC devices. The first of those is, of course, the Handheld PC. Microsoft has also indicated that potential future device directions for Windows CE include "wallet" PCs as well as PCs for the automobile.
Windows CE was built from the ground up to be compact and portable across multiple processors and with functionality specific to the type of non-PC business and consumer devices Microsoft envisions Windows CE supporting.
The primary difference is that Windows CE was specifically designed to be compact to run from ROM on devices with limited memory configurations.
The entire Windows CE operating system for the Handheld PC, which includes the hardware abstraction layer (HAL), the Windows CE Kernel, User, GDI, file systems and databases, takes up approximately 1.5 MB.
Windows CE was designed to be compact to run from ROM in limited memory configurations. The Kernel, User and GDI in Windows CE for the handheld PC take up only 700KB.
Windows CE supports about 500 of the 1,500 Win32-based APIs. Following is a list of some of the major API groups not implemented for version 1 of Windows CE:
Print drivers are currently not provided as part of Windows CE, given the high connectivity between the H/PC and PCs. However, printing can be accomplished through the IR port using Windows Sockets or through a serial connection to a printer.
Currently there are no commercially available video drivers for the Handheld PC. Microsoft is working to change this situation.
It is Microsoft's policy not to discuss unreleased software. But, as with any Microsoft systems product, the company will involve the development community in any upcoming releases of Windows CE before they become generally available.
Microsoft is not currently discussing the feature set for upcoming releases of Windows CE.
It is public knowledge that Java and ActiveX for Windows CE are under development; however, it is Microsoft's policy not to discuss unreleased software. Microsoft does, however, understand that developers are eager to start using Java and ActiveX for their Windows CE-based applications, and Microsoft will continue to keep the development community informed as these exciting additions to the Windows CE family of tools emerge.
Yes. Win32 for Windows CE is really Win32 in that the supported functions behave the same as they do in their implementation for Windows. However, many functions of Win32 are not applicable for Windows CE and do not appear, and thus Win32 for Windows CE is considered a subset of Win32. Also, Windows CE offers some new features such as the object store database API, shell notifications, PIM data API, and the Remote API. These functions are not different than Win32; they are new and are in place to allow developers to take advantage of new features in the Windows CE platform.
Microsoft will support all Handheld PC CPUs that run Windows CE, currently the MIPS R4000 and the Hitachi SH3 CPUs. Microsoft also supports emulation for the x86 CPU and has announced Intel as an industry partner for Windows CE-based devices. Also, Microsoft has publicly announced additional CPUs for which the company is porting the Windows CE operating system: AMD, ARM, and Motorola.
Yes, Windows CE is available for licensing by OEMs. To request more information on Windows CE licensing, send e-mail to wceoem@microsoft.com.