So I took a chance and picked up one of these
(mentioned previously by thcrw739 in another thread
):
http://cgi.ebay.com/7-Mini-netbook-Laptop-Notebook-WiFi-Windows-CE-...
On the outside it's the same as the ubiquitous Alpha 400/RazorBook/CnMBook/Prometium/etc, but as advertised, it has CE 6.0 on the inside. And it's about as generic as an electronic device can get: no labels anywhere on the device, no manufacturer info whatsoever on the box or in the user guide. Some observations thus far:
1
) Takes about 10-17 seconds from power-on to reach the CE desktop, and a mere three seconds to shut down.
(Not exactly instant-on, but noticeably better than the RazorBook.
)
2
) Though it does have a persistent registry like the RazorBook, it
does retain installed data on reboot.
3
) The browsing experience in IE CE doesn't appear to be an improvement over that of the RazorBook, and battery life is definitely inferior to the RazorBook
(only about 2-3 hours of Web browsing on this device, compared to up to eight hours of browsing on the RazorBook
).
4
) Very bright display like the RazorBook, but dims way down after a set period of nonuse
(eg, one minute
).
(I like this feature.
)
5
) It comes pre-loaded with nearly all the DLLs you'll need to adapt Windows Mobile apps
(aygshells, MFC/ATL runtime files, gx, phone/sms, cellcore, and many others
), in a special folder
(\Windows\System
).
6
) It doesn't appear to eat SD cards like the RazorBook does if the card is left in the device when powered off and/or powered back on.
(The RazorBook always tries to find a bootable image file on the card during boot, and in the process hoses the formatting, leaving it in RAW format and destroying the data on the card. This device appears to leave the card intact, with no data/format loss.
)
More testing to come. I need to find more apps in the CE 5-6 range. Some WM 5 and 6 apps seem to work, some don't. .NET CF 2 is pre-installed as well, though most .NET CF 2 apps aren't working yet.
(Similar problem to the one I'm having with many .NET CF apps on my ViewSonic V212.
)
(BTW, maybe we need to broaden the name of this forum to CE 4.x .net
and higher, to include CE 6 - and later Windows Embedded Compact.
)
