Dave Massy's Blog : Windows Embedded

Moving to Embedded Standard

DMassy — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 01:45:00 GMT

One of the people I share an office with (yes I share an office with a couple of others as we have a space crunch but the office does have plenty of windows) - Luca Amapane, has just had a paper published on www.WindowsForDevices.com on Migrating Windows XP Embedded to Windows Embedded Standard 2009
Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is the name for the updated XPe operating system bringing together a number of updates to XP embedded. If you are currently using XP Embedded then you should take a look at moving to WES 2009 and this paper should help.

Moving to Win7

DMassy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:54:00 GMT

It’s time I started blogging here again on a more regular and frequent basis.

I’m working on Windows Embedded, which is the embedded version of desktop Windows. This is not the same as Windows CE which is targeted at smaller devices of different architectures although the products are part of the same business division here at Microsoft. This page on Microsoft.com helps describe the family of Embedded products. Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is the current product offering from the team I work on and is based on Windows XP.

One site that is interesting to watch is www.windowsfordevices.com which comes up with some fascinating devices that use Windows Embedded. Another useful bog is the team one at http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/

As announced last November the next version of the product is codenamed Quebec and will be based on the Win7 codebase. There’s a pretty good presentation on Quebec on Channel 9 given by my boss Shabnam at the PDC last year. When I joined the team last year we were working on a Vista based version of the product but quickly moved to base the product on Windows 7 so that we are more aligned with the current offering of desktop Windows on which we are based. I’ve been playing with Win7 and am excited to see this product ship.

If you want to learn about Win7 then the Engineering Windows 7 blog is a great read and if you like online talks the PDC sessions are online. There’s some great stuff there on things such as Direct2D, Power management etc. that are all going to go towards the success of Windows 7.

So what am I doing on this Win7 based embedded product? I’m working on an area called componentization where we are packaging up the parts of the Windows OS into functional chunks that someone might choose to use in their embedded image. One of the challenges with that is that we want to make sure we don’t have so many packages that it is confusing for someone to build an image that is functional but at the same time we want to ensure that the packages aren’t so big that they incorporate functionality that is not necessary in a customer’s image. If the package has unnecessary functionality in it then that may lead to a much larger image and therefore larger hardware requirements than are truly required. It may also lead to larger surface area for attack which from a security perspective is undesirable.

The embedded device area is very broad covering a lot of different device categories. I think that’s only going to continue to grow as people expect more of the devices in their lives to be connected.

Back from Tech-Ed

DMassy — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:21:00 GMT

Tech-Ed continues this week with "IT Week". Last week was "Dev Week". I'm back in redmond now after being at dev week in Orlando. If you are at Tech-Ed this week then drop by the Windows Embedded area, learn more about the products and give the team members there some feedback.

Tech-Ed was fun and it was great to meet some customers. Tech-Ed isn't normally the event to see Windows Embedded though so at times the number of people visiting our booth was a little low. Mike Hall has a good post on last week at Tech Ed on his blog. It's a pretty good summary and highlights the challenges of reaching the right audience with the right content. There's a lot of potential for smart connected devices running Windows Embedded so how do we best reach the customers interested in this area?

Windows Embedded spotted in the wild.
As I was flying back from Orlando through Chicago I was waiting for my flight when I spotted Windows Embedded in use. Each of the gates for United Airlines has a couple of big flat screen monitors in front of them where you can see what position you are on standby for the next flight. Strapped behind each of these screens is a Wyse thin client. It's difficult to be sure that it was running WIndows Embedded but the display looked extremely close to IE (having worked on IE for so long I recognise some of the subtle characteristics) running on Windows Embedded.

Now I'm back in redmond I should get some real work done :)

Windows Embedded at tech-ed

DMassy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:03:00 GMT

I'm back working at Microsoft. I'm no longer on the IE team but working on Windows Embedded. It's a different area and a lot of fun.

I'm at tech-ed this week in Orlando. If you are there then drop by the Windows Embedded booth in the Technical Learning Center (TLC).

It's good to be back at Microsoft. I'm no longer the "IE guy", a label I wore for many years. That team is doing a great job with IE8 though :)

Windows Embedded Standard is a new area for me powering all sorts of devices such as cash registers, gaming machines, multifunction printers, medical scanners, etc. It's an exciting space with lots of potential.

Thanks
-Dave