Updated Community Technology Preview released for Windows Embedded Standard 8

Posted By J.T. Kimbell
Program Manager

It’s early June, which means that major announcements are coming out that have nerds everywhere excited. No, I’m not talking about E3. I’m talking about Computex! Today, we’re excited to announce the release of the second Community Technology Preview for Windows Embedded Standard 8. In this post David Wurster, a Product Manager on the Windows Embedded team, gives an overview of what to expect in CTP 2 and how to get your hands on it.

What an exciting week for Microsoft and the Windows Embedded team. Today, June 6, Steven Guggenheimer, corporate VP of our OEM Division, announced the availability of the second Windows Embedded Standard 8 community technology preview (CTP) during his keynote at Computex. Windows Embedded Standard 8 is a flexible OS that provides the capabilities of Windows 8 plus additional features to support embedded device requirements around:

Compliance, security & lockdown features to help our partners and customers develop solutions that meet unique industry requirements, as well as provide vital security and lockdown features to manage how data is secured and the devices are accessed by users.
Custom branding for partners to differentiate their solutions and create their own user experiences.
Management and servicing of the OS and applications to enable new opportunities for partners and value to enterprises.
Modularity of the OS to scale to meet the needs of the device.

The CTP 2 release builds on the momentum from the initial Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP Microsoft released in March and delivers performance improvements and new capabilities for our OEM partners to evaluate for future devices. I wanted to highlight a few of the new capabilities we are introducing in CTP 2:

Increased functionality in our lockdown features, including adding support for touch screen keyboards to the Keyboard Filter and a Gesture Filter to control touch based input;
The ability on manage and secure any device created on WES 8 with System Center Configuration Manager 2012 and Forefront;
Additional capabilities around branding, where a device maker can now hide the startup logo, the progress indicator, and the user tile during device startup and logon;
Support for seven additional languages, including French, Chinese and Korean.

The Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP 2 marks the second step in the Windows Embedded 8 launch wave that includes both Windows Embedded Standard 8 and Windows 8 for Embedded Systems. At Microsoft we are very excited about the possibilities Windows 8 technologies provide for Intelligent Systems and encourage our partners to download the CTP 2 today to see for themselves.