Windows CE or Windows Embedded Standard?

windows embedded windows-ce
John C picture John C · Sep 18, 2009 · Viewed 12k times · Source

im building an interactive portable ad campaign device (x86 platform) with touchscreen and stuffs. which is better OS for the device, Win CE or Win embedded standard (XPE). i need to provide support for multimedia platform such as Flash for easy ad development.

thanks.

Answer

Martin Liesén picture Martin Liesén · Sep 21, 2009

Windows CE is

(+) Much cheaper. A few $. If you are planing 100s of devices this is a big factor.

(-) Not as easy to develop against, but the Windows API & .NET are mostly the same.

(+) Considered less vulnerable to viruses / hackers.

(-) Lacking fancy stuff (like WPF, silverlight, good webserver/webbrowser).

(+) Lighter, runs on less memory and slower CPU.

Both XP embedded and Windows CE can be built using tools that allow you to add/remove components from med OS making it possible to trim it to your requirements. Most developer probably never does this but rather use what is "factory default" delivered with the hardware, or let the hardware guys make a custom made image for you.

If you are only doing a few devices, XP embedded is the right choice.

Related questions

Power off an USB device in software on Windows

I would like to power cycle an USB device through software on Windows. I am doing development on a small USB power microcontroller. This chip will revert to native behavior on a power cycle and allow a code download. Since …

Read More
Device misdetected as serial mouse

I'm working on a device which communicates with a PC through a (virtual) serial port. The problem is that the data we are sending occasionally gets incorrectly identified by Windows as a bus mouse, after which the "Microsoft Serial Ballpoint" …

Read More
How to get stable COM-ports for USB serial dongles in Windows XP?

I develop embedded systems and need serial ports for communication. In Windows XP the numbers for USB serial port dongles keep moving around, which makes it hard to use in scripts or makefiles (for example for flash programming NXP controllers …

Read More