John Swenson
MSDN Online
October 14, 1997
If the first crop of handheld PCs running Microsoft Windows CE didn't get you excited, it's time to take another look. With the shipment of the Windows CE 2.0 operating system this week, the next wave of CE hardware, applications, and tools is on the horizon.
Most visible will be the new types of Handheld PCs (H/PCs) and other hardware running CE 2.0. Many of these new devices will look similar to the first batch of H/PCs, but others promise to change the public's idea of what Windows CE is all about.
It's probably safe to assume, for example, that most people don't think of washing machines when they think of Windows CE. Yet one company actually did try to run Windows CE on an industrial washing machine, according to Bill Baxter, CEO of Bsquare Corporation, one of 16 Microsoft Systems Integration Partners that are helping hardware manufacturers fit CE onto various types of devices. Although the washing machine project didn't pan out (mainly for business reasons, not technical reasons, Baxter says), Bsquare is among the CE systems integrators that report seeing a wide variety of hardware (most of it still unannounced) come though their labs.
If you're a developer who has followed the progress of Windows CE, you've probably heard that Microsoft's embedded operating system eventually will run on telephones, game machines, WebTV set-top boxes, DVD players, and new types of H/PCs that will range from tiny "wallet PCs" to larger handhelds that look like small laptops. "All of these products are on the horizon and potentially represent very, very large volumes," says Craig Mundie, Senior Vice President in charge of Microsoft's Consumer Platforms Division. According to Mundie, the H/PC market that Microsoft started with Windows CE 1.0 and 2.0 might turn out to be fairly small compared to the market that could exist someday for all these other types of consumer devices.
Who knows, maybe some company will even succeed at getting Windows CE onto a washing machine and jump-start the market for computerized laundry devices running a lightweight operating system. Because Windows CE 2.0 is totally componentized, developers and engineers can use only the pieces of the operating system they need for the particular device they're designing. This flexibility to adapt CE to whatever a manufacturer needs should lead to new types of CE devices that haven't even been imagined yet.
For now, the H/PC is where the action is in the CE market. With the shipment of Windows CE 2.0, manufacturers are preparing to ship their second generation of H/PCs by the end of the year. The most noticeable feature on many of these new H/PCs will be their bright color screens. These easier-to-read screens, combined with a host of other major improvements, such as TrueType fonts and the ability to connect second-generation H/PCs to a network, should persuade a lot more consumers and companies to buy the devices.
With the growth in the H/PC market will come demand for many new CE applications. If you're a developer, the good news is that there are now a lot more tools you can use to create these applications. With Windows CE 1.0, developers were pretty much limited to Visual C++ for Windows CE. With Windows CE 2.0, developers will have four main tools.
The first three Windows CE tools are add-ons to the full-fledged desktop versions of Visual Basic, Visual C++, or Visual J++. The Windows CE add-on toolkits will allow Windows developers to use the same familiar Microsoft tools they work with today to create Windows CE applications. Beta versions of two of these add-on toolkits—the Windows CE Toolkits for Visual Basic 5.0 and Visual C++ 5.0—are already available for download from the Microsoft Windows CE Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsce/developer/). The Windows CE Toolkit for Visual J++ is still in development and will be available for download when it reaches beta.
The Windows CE Toolkit for Visual Basic, in particular, should have a big impact on the number of CE apps available, by opening up this new platform to the huge number of Visual Basic developers. Let's say you build apps in Visual Basic for your company. If your IS department decides to let some employees test the new Windows CE 2.0 H/PCs due out in the next few months, you'll be able to create Windows CE versions of your company's Visual Basic apps without having to learn a new language or development environment.
For developers who want to work at the hardware level, Microsoft will also ship a fourth tool: Windows CE Embedded Toolkit for Visual C++. This toolkit is aimed at developers and engineers who want to embed the CE operating system into new devices.
As these new tools and second-generation H/PCs roll out over the coming months, they promise to challenge almost everyone's notions of what Windows CE is all about. If you're among those who thought they understood this lightweight operating system, it's time to move beyond your first impressions of Windows CE and take another look.
I'm John Swenson. I started working at Microsoft this month, after several years of covering Microsoft and other software companies for Windows Watcher newsletter, Information Week magazine, and a local newspaper in the Seattle area. I'll use my journalism background to focus on bringing you the high-level overview of new Microsoft products and technologies for developers, answering such pressing questions as "Why should I care about this?" Above all, I'll try to make it interesting for you, the developer.