You may have seen the reports in the last 24 hours of reports from MEDC 2006 of Microsoft formally unveiling the release name of 'Cardhu' as Windows CE 6.0; well not quite a release, it's only a beta.

Windows CE 6.0 will sign the first core activity for the Windows CE operating system since the July 2004 release of its predecessor, Windows CE 5.0.

As with any Windows CE core release, the user interface is not a matter of paramount, instead the core features and expandability of the operating system mark true progress down the product evolution pathway. With Windows CE 6.0, Microsoft is looking to continue to push Windows CE away from its historic, small device roots and into a powerful and robust alternative platform to existing Win32 releases.

One of the most significant kernel changes in CE 6.0 is the expansion of the Operating Systems simultaneous process quota, moving from a conservative 32 processes up to 32,000. Similar enhancements have been made to the memory addressing scheme to facilitate this - meaning we will begin to see Windows CE based devices shipping with increasingly larger internal memory capacities.

After 7 core releases, the role and significance of the legendary Platform Builder is also being changed. Instead of being a stand-alone environment, Platform Builder will become a modular member of the Visual Studio family, embedding into the latest Visual Studio release as a part of the Windows Development hierarchy.

While there is currently no formal schedule for a final release of Windows CE 6.0, it is expected to coincide with the closed release to manufacturing of Windows Vista later in the year.


View: MEDC 2006