Programmer's Corner

 The Windows CE Developer's Conference

By Steve Mann

It was quite an event! From the 6th to the 8th of April more than 2100 developers, engineers, and movers and shakers of the Windows CE world gathered in San Jose, California for the annual Windows CE Developer's Conference. Even when you subtract 150-200 Microsoft people and 50-100 press people, that's still quite a strong showing. Last year's developer conference was less than half that size.

Each morning various Microsoft higher-ups treated us to technical marketing presentations. The emphasis was on the technologies, the status of Software Developer Kits (SDKs), tools for developers, APIs, and the coming attractions for the next six-twelve months. Dave Wecker, Principle Engineer, Microsoft Mobile Electronics Product Unit, did an extended Palm-size PC demo that really gave us an idea of that device's capabilities. Randy Kath, Group Manager, Microsoft Windows CE Tools, talked about the various SDKs and tools. On the final day, Handheld PC Magazine columnist Andy Seybold talked about wireless data solutions and hosted a series of demonstrations.

The presentations were only part of the conference. During lunch, and the first three evenings (Sunday through Tuesday), the exhibits hall was open. There were 40-50 OEM manufacturers and vendors displaying Windows CE products and services. By far the largest percentage were hardware and chip manufacturers, system integrators, consultants, and other service companies that focus on helping companies bring Windows CE products to the marketplace (see Windows CE Developer's products and services, page 44). There were very few developers of commercial shrink-wrap applications. That's an indication of the relative newness of the Windows CE software market, plus the fact that a Windows CE device, right out of the box, has most of the basic applications that a user might want.

Afternoons consisted of as many as six parallel tracks, so it was almost impossible to attend everything of interest (a few sessions were repeated). The tracks focus on writing H/PC applications (for the Handheld PC, Palm-size PC, and Auto PC), Windows CE internals (threads, graphics, communications, synching, object store, and so on), and on embedded systems (writing drivers and shells, and hardware adaptations).

"Embedded Systems" developers well represented

One presentation, on the morning of the first day, asked for a show of hands of embedded, corporate, and commercial developers. Surprisingly, the largest percentage (easily over 50 percent) was embedded developers. Since last fall, when Microsoft introduced Windows CE 2.0 at the Embedded Systems Conference, they have stated that Windows CE is appropriate for embedded systems. At that time they also announced the componentization of the Windows CE OEM Adaptation Kit (OAK) so that system designers can readily pick and chose the pieces they want.

Apparently, embedded engineers and developers are starting to take notice. Many of the embedded developers were there just trying to figure out what Windows CE was and whether they should take it seriously.

Embedded systems are difficult to define (at least I'm still looking for a clear-cut definition). They typically aren't consumer products, but more specialized for industrial applications. Often, they require predictable real-time performance, including fast and guaranteed interrupt latency and response times, sophisticated scheduling, process and thread capabilities, very high mean times between crashes, and small memory footprints. Many of the developers I talked to were quite skeptical that Microsoft could deliver an operating system with those qualities. Microsoft did promise that within the next six months, they would deliver a beta version Windows CE with better real-time capabilities, more threads and priority levels, and solid performance. They committed to deliver a final hard real-time system within the next year.

In the mean time, the embedded market already has quite a few proven operating systems (in fact, you could say it's a bit fragmented, which may be why so many embedded developers are checking out Windows CE -- it may be a unifying OS standard around which they can rally). Several of these vendors are already offering Windows CE layered on top of their own real-time kernel, much like they are doing with Java. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft can deliver the goods and whether the embedded world will migrate to Windows CE.

Commitment to handheld computing

At the same time that Microsoft is targeting the embedded market, they are also strengthening their commitment to handheld computing. Claiming that more than 500,000 handheld PCs have been sold, they are very optimistic about the continued success of that type of product and also about the new "Palm-size PC."

The company is continuing to work on new developer tools and APIs to fit everyone's needs. They showed Visual Basic for CE, which is now shipping, and the beta Java toolkit. They are migrating more and more Win32 APIs to Windows CE. Unfortunately, for those of you interested in the Palm-size PCs, none of the current memory-hogging tools (VB, Java, MFC, and so on) are available for the smaller form factors. As their memory capacities increase, Microsoft may migrate larger technologies onto the pocketables - it depends to a certain extent on what their OEM partners and developers request. Since the Palm-size PCs have only just shipped, it's a bit tough to tell what's going to happen.

Personally, I think Microsoft is taking too much of a shotgun approach to Windows CE. According to them, it's good for handheld computers, embedded systems, automobiles (I really don't get that market, but then, I don't own a car), and any other type of consumer or industrial device you can think of. To mix my metaphors, they're tossing a plate full of pasta at the wall to see how much of it will stick. I hope they get around to identifying the chunks that stick and get on with it.

Overall, the Windows CE Developer's Conference was a well-run, informative event, although a bit expensive. (For $1195 you do get one of the computers formerly know as the Palm PC, but that's still expensive.) Like most events, the sessions were only part of the story. You can certainly learn Windows CE programming without paying that kind of fee. You can't, however, experience the lunch time gossip and speculation, the networking, the overall feel you get for what Microsoft and its partners are up to, without attending. Microsoft announced they plan on hosting this event every spring. Next year's will undoubtedly be bigger and better (and maybe even livelier).

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