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Apr./May 1999 Vol.12
 
Technology Section  

What's the major difference between Windows 95/98/NT and Windows® CE?

1. Small footprint & cross platform: Windows 95/98/NT can occupy several hundred Mbytes of storage space while Windows® CE is a modularized, cross-platform operating system supporting RISC, ARM, MIPS, SHx and x86 CPUs. It takes only 2 - 6 MB, making it a good solution for embedded operations with SSD.

2. Customized, Modularized: Windows 95/98/NT is a completed, ready-to-use OS for almost any x86 platforms. On the contrary, Windows® CE is hardware dependent, modularized OS only for the target platform. In fact, the Windows® CE released by Microsoft is a Embedded Tool Kit (ETK) rather than an OS. The ETK comprises of Windows CE kernel, a limited list of device drivers and tools for users to build a customized Windows® CE (image) for the target platform. As you can see several problems happened here :
  A. Many devices have not yet supported Windows® CE yet. It depends on hardware supplier to convert   their current device driver on Windows 95/98/NT into CE. Otherwise, users have to develop their own.
  B. Devices driver can not be nstalled from media (FD, title) to Windows® CE directly. Add/remove any   device driver needs to e-build the customized Windows® CE mage.

3. License: Users get the license from Microsoft to use Windows 95/98/NT at purchase. However, it is not the story for Windows® CE. Customers still do not own the Windows® CE license after buying ETK. The license will be authorized by MS in the following two models : MS licenses to OEM specific products such as PDA, H/PC or Advantech MBPC-200/4823CE. Windows® CE license is included at hardware purchase because OEMs already have their product hardware and application certified by Microsoft. Or customers can build their own Windows® CE on Advantech hardware and submit their application details to Microsoft for license.

4. Application software and device driver are different: All of Windows® CE application need be complied by Microsoft Visual C++ for Windows® CE because the set of Object class of in Microsoft Visual C++ for Windows® CE is different from normal Microsoft Visual C++. Windows® CE device driver is not compatible with either Windows NT or Windows 95/98. They need to be built from Windows® CE ETK.

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Does Windows® CE provide a shell?

The shell issue has been a very sore subject, and Microsoft has been feeling the pain for removing the shell. We try to summarize the situation and show other possibilities. ETK 2.0 provided the Explorer shell that is similar to the H/PC shell and Windows 95/NT4.0 as an example. OEMs were not allowed to use the shell in their product unless they were an H/PC manufacturer or got special permission from Microsoft (which is very rare). There were two reasons for this. The first was that the shell was designed for small screen formats (i.e. H/PCs). If you try the shell with a larger screen resolution, some of the menu items and control panels get cut off. The second reason was to limit the number of H/PC vendors to those that Microsoft is working very closely with to improve the OS and the H/PC devices.

It is well understood that the biggest draw to Windows® CE for Embedded developers was that it looked like its big brothers 95 and NT. Microsoft will continue to allow the H/PC and Palm-size PC manufacturers to use the Windows 95/NT 4.0 lookalike shell. Microsoft may in the future provide example shells and possibly bring back a new shell in future ETK releases for Embedded OEMs. When this will happen is unknown. There are third parties offering kits, but if you know how to write a Win32 application, you know how to write a shell.

 

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