low initial and life cycle cost," WinSystems said.


Typical WinSystems development kit
The Windows environment also offers a time-to-market edge, WinSystems noted. "Windows CE offers application developers the versatile environment of the Microsoft Win32 application programming interface (API), along with the ease and versatility of scripting languages. It also offers bundled support for multimedia, the Internet, local area networks (LANs), and mobile communications and security services."

WinSystems is supporting Windows CE 5.0 across its line of PC/104, PC/104-Plus, EPIC, and EBX single-board computers, which target rugged industrial applications that require an extended operating temperature of -40 to +85 degrees C. The company is providing an SDK-4 development kit for each boards in order "to reduce clutter and space on the developer's bench by integrating the power supply, disk drives, and cables in a preconfigured platform."

The kit's SBC, which contains a bootable solid-state disk, mounts on the top of the box to allow easy access to debug the hardware and software associated with the embedded computer portion of a project. The kit also includes a Quick Start kit whose BSP (board support package) provides software drivers for industrial-type I/O that is not currently supported by Windows CE. The kit also comes with a CD containing sample Windows CE images for the target SBC, sample application code, sample driver code, an evaluation copy of Microsoft's Platform, board manuals, Windows CE tutorials and other documentation. Pricing on the SDK-4 hardware development system starts at $1395.