While Year 2008 is just around the corner and we are counting down the final hours or minutes to the end of Year 2007, the Imagine Cup 2008 clock is also ticking: 31 days left for its first round competition by Feb 1, 2008. The finals will be in Paris this July. As the World’s Premier Student Technology Competition, Imagine Cup is “one way Microsoft is encouraging young people to apply their...

Just a note to let our customers know that the Embedded Windows team will be taking time off over the Christmas weekend and returning on Wednesday, December 26th (PST). That means that responses to mails or questions will be delayed until at least Wednesday. For those who are taking time off in the next few days we hope you have a great time and come back to work refreshed and revitalized! - Lynda...

Some customers have indicated they want to know if there were any workarounds for the issues addressed in the October Optional updates available on the ECE site. Rebuilding the image is the most reliable way to get the fix, but some customers do not want that hassle for hundreds of deployed devices if they can just push down some files and reg keys to the runtime using the mechanism they already have...

A big thanks to everyone who joined us for our last chat session on December 4th! If you weren’t able to make it, you can now read the full transcript of the chat on the MSDN site here . The chat was focused on the Indian market and handled some basic topics of interest to developers new to XP Embedded and also covered how XPe differentiates itself from Microsoft's other Embedded product offerings...

Have fun building your own portable PC. The VIA ARTiGO Pico-ITX Builder Kit is designed to help DIY enthusiasts utilize all the features of the ultra compact VIA Pico-ITX motherboard. The ARTiGO includes a 1GHz VIA EPIA Pico-ITX mainboard, compact form factor chassis, power adapter and accessories. Specs : Chassis included 5.9"(L) x 4.3"(D) x 1.8"(H) (15cm x 11cm x 4.5cm) CPU: via C7...

While Seattle is getting chilly and really feels like winter, I miss the warm weather and fun I had in China last month. TechEd China 2007 was held in Beijing on Nov. 7-9. CEO Steve Ballmer was the Keynote speaker. For the first time, the keynote was presented in the Great Hall of the People, “the most magnificent ‘conf room’ in the world as Steve said. I presented an introductory session...

Periodically we like to highlight our partners in the Embedded space. Datasound Laboratories is based in the United Kingdom and focused on Single Board Computers and Touch Screen Panel PC Systems, amongst other Embedded solutions. I found this in the DSL newsletter today, it's the the new ultra low power ICOP-6115 . It measures just 100mm x 66mm and is based on the new Vortex86SX CPU. It requires...

Over the years there have been a number of newsgroup posts about using System Cloning with IIS. Some customers have cloned the image and then found that IIS service will not restart on the cloned image when it boots up. There are a number of issues that may have an impact here. The most common one to be aware of is that fbreseal.exe does not support cloning an image more than once. Cloning an image...

This is a reminder that we are hosting a MSDN online chat tomorrow (12/04/07) morning, from 7.30-8.30am PDT (9-10pm, IND) . Come join the product team in the MSDN Chat room to discuss Windows XP Embedded, ask questions, and give us feedback. You can join the chat directly from this MSDN page . The team is all looking forward to this session with our Indian customers and developers, so please...