Sounds familiar? It should be.

It would be difficult to write this without a certain sense of self satisfaction from the knowledge that the cyclic mentality that is the Microsoft embedded systems division, which periodically attempts to refresh itself with the same idea.

Not only is Microsoft’s latest announcement on the future of the Windows Embedded line familiar, but the return of Handheld to the name speaks of a nostalgia over something that we’d long thought that Microsoft had tried to forget about.

Microsoft has announced the development of a new embedded OS line that is slated as the beginning of the erosion of the differences between Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded CE once and for all.

What has been announced is the familiarly named ‘Windows Embedded Handheld’ Edition and the new buzzword for it is as an Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA).
The release will be made in two flavours, the first one, due by the end of Q4 will be based upon the Windows Mobile 6.5 core, with a version based upon the Windows Embedded CE 7 system slated for release sometime after during 2011.

What we are seeing is the Windows CE-esque generation of devices returning to the consumer vs. commercial distinctions that we saw with the early Handheld PC vs. Pocket PC argument and an approach that will seek to fully modularise the Windows CE and Windows Mobile licensing situation. Eventually the plan is that eventually the two will be merged into a single development tool that will replace the old Platform Builder/OEM Adaption Kit paradigm with a single product.

No information is currently available on the plans for Office Mobile or the development on Internet Explorer, however as a community that has for many years observed that not only is there a need for a commercial/consumer distinction in the PDA market but also that Microsoft’s approach it has been nothing short of cyclically repetitive what we are seeing is a full scale return to the origins of Windows CE and the single solution platform; not to mention yet another name change for the Windows Embedded lineage, back to its ‘Handheld’ roots.

Viva Handheld PC.

View: ZDNet