CE6 Virtual Launch Keynote: Post 2

Back to Todd Warren.  He is talking about all the connectivity options that are now part of Windows CE.  The Networked Media Device (NMD) feature pack allows people to build devices like DVRs.  Wireless networking and media makes it easy to build connected projectors, connected soda machines, connected fleets of trucks, etc.  The cellcore technology enables a lot of new connectivity scenarios that weren't possible in the Microsoft offerings before.

Mike Hall is back, creating an OS image for a cell-connected picture frame.  He's showing off the OS design wizard and catalog in our new tools, which by the way are now plugged into Visual Studio.  He's creating an image that removes the standard CE shell, adds in his .NET CF picture frame application and his own RASDIAL component.  Oh that's kind of cool, he's got it set up to get RSS feeds from Windows Live, so his connected picture frame can take images from a Windows Live site.  All of this built using just the components that are part of Windows CE.

Todd is now talking about the tool chain that Mike briefly showed off.  How Platform Builder is now a plug-in to Visual Studio.  You can do all of this inside the Visual Studio shell, and gain productivity from VS capabilities.

He's switching to talk about the XP Embedded Feature Pack 2007...  Here he has 3 big areas of emphasis too.  The first is the ability to boot off USB now.  Secondly, apparently they did a lot of work to increase the productivity of XP embedded developers.  Tool chain improvements, like improvements in the OS design creation and build.  Third...  Dang!  I missed the third one.  I think it was something about a file system filter to increase device security.

Mike is back, to show off XP Embedded tools.  He's showing how you can choose features out of Target Designer by just clicking on the feature.  He is going to show off the USB boot on a "kiosk / gaming console" device with a managed kiosk shell.  He has the OS on a USB disk-on-key.  It boots straight into the kiosk shell.

Todd is explaining how the USB key lets you do things like secure the image, put diagnostic components onto the key, and maintain devices more easily by containing all the OS state on the key.

Now they're starting a Q&A panel so I'll put that into a different post.