Earlier, I posted some random thoughts and notes that I took at the first XP Embedded Ask the Experts session at last week's DevCon (see the post at http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2004/06/30/170582.aspx).  I also want to post some stuff that I wrote down from the 2nd Ask the Experts session (last Thursday at lunch).  I'm sorry it has taken me this long to post this stuff.....I'm going to be working with my team in the next couple of weeks to come up with plans to address all the great feedback and ideas we heard last week at DevCon and I'm really excited to get moving on some of this stuff....

• Is it possible to restrict/disable plug-n-play detection and the “found a new device“ dialog after the device is up and running?  PnP is something I haven't done extensive testing with since I joined this group so I want to do some research into this.  I am guessing that this has been answered on the newsgroups but I need to go find out....
• What is the version of MSXML that Target Designer requires?  I did a quick search of our tools MSI and didn't find any references to MSXML, so it appears that Target Designer should work correctly with the version that ships with golden XP.  I don't know if that is actually true though - so this is another item for me to do some quick research on
• In pre-SP2 runtime images, there is about a 30 second lag before Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) is up and running, which gives a window of time for virus infection.  This is addressed in XPSP2 with the new Windows Firewall functionality, but what are the options for closing this in SP1 runtimes?
• We need to discuss strategies for creating components from applications in more detail - this item gets into the topic that I've been thinking a lot about both in the embedded space and in general - application repackaging.  I'm still working on a discussion of this topic and I'm sorry it is taking me so long to publish, but it keeps getting longer and longer and I want to find ways to break it up but also cover all the stuff on my mind in this area
• The need for source control and integrated build process engineering for XPE was emphasized again today, and I'm really excited to dig into this area in more detail.  This hits one of my other areas of research lately - creating cleaner, repeatable build processes for our products.  The original designs for Target Designer seem to have only been targeting users who want to build runtimes in the GUI, and that doesn't lead to readily repeatable processes for companies that want to build lots of different images or maintain source control over their SLD/SLX files and create something like daily builds for their runtimes, figure out what changes from revision to revision of an SLD/SLX, etc.  Stay tuned for more ideas in my blog and hopefully some how-to white papers on the MSDN embedded site soon.....

I'll keep everyone posted on progress in these areas as we make it.....thanks again to everyone who attended DevCon and provided us with your valuable input into what we're doing well and more importantly where we're not doing so well.....