Windows Embedded Compact 7 officially released

Windows Embedded Compact 7 (still a horrible name) has finally been released officially . The press release is here: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2010/may10/05-31ComputexPR.mspx

And some videos and the Public CTP download (for you to tinker with) is here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/compact7.mspx

Seamless connectivity

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Seamless connection to Microsoft Windows 7

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Connect to Office and personal information

* Updated Office viewers
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Rich user experiences

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Extensible rich UI framework

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Rich desktop browsing

* Updated Internet Explorer browsing engine with support for latest standards
* Support for tabs, panning, and zooming
* Access to rich multimedia content with support for Adobe Flash 10.1

Immersive experiences with natural touch input

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Streamlined developer experience with Visual Studio integration

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Take advantage of the latest HW innovations

* Support for latest ARM v7 architectures
* Increased graphics performance with Open GL ES 2.0
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* Bluetooth support (2.1) with connectivity to latest devices

Edited by ZSX 2010-06-01 10:57 AM

I think that is a far great future for embedded Windows versions.

Absolutely Horrendous.

Windows CE 7 RUINED the Classic Windows Desktop browsing. Now it's just a wannabe of Android BSery.
I swear, companies these days are "cheating" customers with flashy GUI's rather than work on efficency and simplicity.

I don't even think it deserves the title, "Windows CE" anymore.
They should just call it, "Windows Android".

It looks almost exactly like android with those ugly taskbar icons placed on a table...A TABLE! Are they joking!
It even has the desktop scrolling exactly like Android.

I am sticking with Windows CE 6.0...........

Edited by NathanielZhu 2010-06-02 4:59 AM

Moved to News & Editorials

You'll have to explain to me what you're talking about, Nathaniel. The core shell hasn't changed:

http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=15237&posts=3&start=1

I think you're looking at an overlaid custom UI. See here, for example:

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/Windows-Embedded-Compact-7-CTP/

Can't say for sure until it's rolled out, but the specs do seem to suggest a much more powerful OS. Clearly Microsoft needs to have an answer to the sophisticated touchscreen gesturing support of the iPhone OS that has people drooling over the iPad. Flash Player 10.1 support in IE CE sounds like a big improvement too.

The majority of hardware on WinEC7 will have custom UIs, but it shouldn't be difficult to revert to the basic desktop UI when (and if) you need it.

I also see that Silverlight is now part of WinEC, which hopefully means that there will be sufficient crossover of apps from Windows Phone 7. I'm really hoping that Silverlight for WinEC7 can be easily updated because Silverlight itself is moving quite quickly.

I expect some kind of advaced trust management as I'm fed up a bit with one in CE 6.0 (I CAN'T OVERCLOCK!!!).

WOW...This WinCE7 looks/sounds awesome...Will our current chinese netbooks be ablet o handle this once its official?

Quite surprised they've started supporting OpenGL again. It was quite obvious since 1998/99, microsoft were determined to undermine OpenGL.
I guess losing ground to the competition has forced them to re-evaluate their pig-headed attitude towards non-ms standards/technologies.

YAY! New Windows Crippled Edition!

Edited by 16bithovercar 2010-08-27 8:12 AM

I think you mean Windows Edition Crippled, it's got a bit of a French thing going on.

Some obscure company should come out and launch a new OS for those who prefer the classic Windows CE layout. If not, Windows CE has had it ... at least on the consumer side.

Well I have a dumb question:
what are the minimum files to download to see it running on a PC?
Are the zip files ending in 1,2,3,4 successive releases, or all needed?

I was hoping to see a sort of "running image" you could try in a PC WinCE emulator, is there such a thing?
I seem to remember that in the old days of WinCE2, there was a dev version that ran on the PC without too much overload. Here they say you need 100MB free space...?

Platform Builder is a rather large program to download, is it the only way to try out WinCE7?
I've never tried it, do you have to build some image first or is it ready to run the files ending in 1,2,3,4?
(sorry i did not copy the filenames, but it you dowloaded from the link above I hope you remember what I'm referring to)

Edited by Jacobi 2010-08-31 5:14 PM

I don't even think it deserves the title, "Windows CE" anymore.
They should just call it, "Windows Android".

It looks almost exactly like android with those ugly taskbar icons placed on a table...A TABLE! Are they joking!
It even has the desktop scrolling exactly like Android.

Meh, call it WinCE 7 and I'd like it 2% more. It looks like a good OS, seems like it has enough bells and whistles to cater to the masses. However I'm just not a huge fan of this "everything happens on one screen" tablet fad we're in. I like a physical keyboard (yes yes, I know you get get external ones...).

It's all about content consumption, it's youtube for the masses. Give me something I can actually USE, like keeping my forums up to date, writing long emails and various text documents. I don't want to carry around a damn extra peripheral just to type.

Sorry, went a bit off topic there.