| Microsoft keynote inaugurates Embedded DevCon 2004 |
Jun. 29, 2004
[Updated 10:00pm PDT] -- Microsoft formally inaugurated its 2004 Embedded Developers' Conference (DevCon) this morning in San Diego, with a keynote talk by Tom Adams, General Manager of the Windows CE Platforms group. Adams briefly reviewed the enormous diversity of present and future smart devices, and outlined Microsoft's strategy of offering low cost, reliable, and easy-to-use development tools and software for smart devices. The keynote also included demonstrations of new Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded development tools and technologies, and of devices based on them, as well as some entertaining videos.
 Adams noted that Microsoft has recently combined its embedded and mobile operations into a single group, the Mobile and Embedded Devices division, which includes the following product and technology categories: - Embedded devices
- Mobile devices
- Portable media centers
- Windows Automotive
- Communications sector
- Map point
- Voice control
The Mobile and Embedded Devices Group is one of Microsoft's seven major divisions. "Being one of these seven divisions within Microsoft means that we receive leadership right from the top. We have sitdowns with Bill Gates around where we're taking our technology, what are the strategies we need to put in place, and what are new features that we should be enabling in all of our embedded offerings," Adams said.
Some key accomplishments of Windows Embedded during the last year mentioned by Adams include the growth of the Windows Embedded Partner program to over 2,500 member companies; exponential growth in China, Taiwan, and India; the existence of 131 Windows Mobile and Embedded MVPs ("most valuable professionals"); substantial growth in the Windows Embedded Community; and thousands of customer design wins. Additionally, Adams showed a slide that said that both Gartner and VDC, embedded market analyst firms, report that Microsoft's Windows Embedded OSes were #1 in market share in the embedded operating system market in 2003, while both IDC and VDC rated Windows Embedded #1 in revenue for the period 2001 through 2003.
He emphasized the importance of yesterday's announcement that all developers, worldwide will be able to use modified Windows CE 5.0 shared source code in commercial products -- without needing to sublicense the modifications back to Microsoft -- and briefly discussed the significance of that capability to optimizing and differentiating smart devices.
Adams also offered a brief glimpse of the Windows Embedded product roadmap for the next two years:
Windows Embedded Roadmap | Now | 2005+ | Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition | Magneto | | Windows CE 5.0 | 12-18 months to next major release | | Windows XP Embedded SP1, SP2 | Longhorn Embedded | | Visual Studio .NET | Visual Studio 2005 |
 The keynote included several entertaining videos. One showed a "space rover" robot developed at the California Polytechnic State University ("Cal Poly"), pictured on the left, which uses Windows CE as its embedded OS. Another was a light-hearted, documentary-style look inside Microsoft at the history of Windows Embedded and some of its customers -- "we asked Michael Moore to do it but he was busy, so our marketing team threw this together," Adams said.
During the keynote, Mike Hall, Technical Product Manager for the Windows Mobile and Embedded Platforms, treated the attendees to a snappy demo of building a Windows CE 5.0 OS image and downloading it into a smart picture frame. Platform Builder 5 sure seems easy-to-use -- at least in the expert hands of Hall. There's a video on Microsoft's Channel 9 website, Hall says, showing some of what he demonstrated online, with more to appear there soon. One really cool feature of the project is the ability to drag/drop picture files from a PC directly into the pictures directory in the picture frame, just like copying files from one PC to a shared directory on another. This makes use of new remote access technology in Windows CE 5.0, Hall said.
A sneak preview of Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2 (SP2) was skillfully presented by Mike Beck, Group Program Manager of XP Embedded Development, who demonstrated the rapid system reload capabilities of SP2 by pulling the plug on a point-of-sale (POS) terminal and showing it restart from an automatically saved system image in about 9 seconds (after completion of the BIOS POST routine), using the new "hybernate once, resume many" feature. He also showed how easy XP Embedded makes adding Bluetooth peripherals, by adding a Bluetooth mouse while we watched. It was funny to see how many devices in the audience got picked up by the OS's "scan for Bluetooth devices" part of that process. Mine was one! That wouldn't have happened a year ago.
Next, Mike Hall briefly showed off some Windows powered devices that were displayed in several locations on the stage. They included - Music jukebox
- Electronic golf game
- Retail point-of-sale (POS) terminal
- Pay-by-touch system that uses fingerprint recognition
- Slot machine for casino gaming
- IP set-top box
- Creative's Portable Media Center
- RFID reader usable in grocery checkouts
- "Pathfinder" communications device for the disabled
Finally, there was a third video, which presented an inspiring vision of "a day in the life of a regular family." Here's what we saw pass through the hands of the regular family's Dad, Mom, Sister, and Brother: I don't know about your family, but mine doesn't happen to have all of these cool gadgets on hand to play with in the course our day. Perhaps such an array of Windows powered gadgets is a standard employee benefit for Microsoft employees!
Here's one exciting tidbit I gleaned from the talk. Microsoft has always maintained that its Smart Personal Objects Technology (a.k.a. "SPOT") isn't exclusively meant for watches. They've been quietly developing a cool SPOT development platform based on a 32-bit ARM7 processor which can be programmed by means of a "tiny" subset of the .NET Compact Framework. The core of the platform is a tiny computer module in the shape of (and with pins like) a 32-pin dual-in-line chip package, so it can be plugged into various expansion boards to create development prototypes. In addition to the ARM7 processor, the module also includes an unspecified amount of RAM or DRAM, 4MB of Flash, and ports for serial, USB, and I2C. The best part: Microsoft expects to begin making the kits available to developers later this year, to spark various SPOT-powered innovations. They currently have a robot prototype powered by SPOT. Uh-oh -- get ready for all the "see SPOT run" jokes ;-)
-- by WindowsForDevices.com editor-in-chief Rick Lehrbaum, on location at DevCon in San Diego
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