Windows Embedded Standard 8 Third Community Technology Preview Released

Posted By J.T. Kimbell
Program Manager

In June, we announced at Computex in Taiwan the release of the second Community Technology Preview (CTP) for Windows Embedded Standard 8. Building on that momentum, we’re excited to say the third CTP is available today, and David Wurster, a product manager on the Windows Embedded team, is here to tell us more about how you can get a download and try it out.

Today the Microsoft Windows Embedded team is excited to announce the availability of the third Windows Embedded Standard 8 community technology preview (CTP).

This release follows the Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP 2 made available in June and delivers many quality improvements and several new capabilities – including:

• Alignment with the Windows 8 RTM codebase.
• New specialized device templates added to provide easy to use blueprints as a starting point for designing the OS for your specialized devices.
• New features and enhancements around lockdown scenarios, including a special servicing mode for devices that use the Unified Write Filter, and a new ability to block and filter USB ports.
• Support for even more languages, including Arabic, Dutch, Italian, Russian, Swedish, and Turkish.
• Many quality improvements, such as a restructured catalog, F1 help available in the Image Configuration Editor (ICE) toolkit, improved USB media creation, and modules to support common applications.

The Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP 3 marks another milestone on Windows Embedded Standard 8 roadmap, but your feedback is still needed to ensure that we’re delivering the best product that we possibly can. At Microsoft we are very excited about the possibilities Windows 8 technologies provide for intelligent systems and encourage our partners to download the CTP 3 today.