First Look: Windows CE 2.0 

By David Shier

It’s now been one year since Bill Gates used the Cirque du Soleil as a backdrop to officially kickoff Microsoft’s new Windows CE operating system at Comdex 1996. I was impressed with the magnitude of the launch party. Given the competition for Bill Gates’ time, the fact that he personally appeared to introduce the industry to Windows CE was a clear indication of Microsoft’s commitment to the handheld market.

At the introduction, Gates explained that an important design requirement for Windows CE handhelds was placing the operating system and applications software on replaceable ROM modules. This allows you to purchase a first generation Windows CE H/PC without the worry that it will be obsolete as soon as the first bug is found in the software.

Microsoft is helping the OEM vendors to come through with the promise by making the new version of Windows CE backward compatible with the crop of H/PCs released with Version 1. This means that for many H/PCs you should be able to purchase the upgrade module and simply install it in your current H/PC. (Some recent purchasers of H/PCs with Windows CE version 1.0 are eligible for free upgrade kits. See this section for information on the upgrade path for the individual manufacturers of the H/PC.)

Some of Windows CE 2.0’s new features, such as support for color screens, will require new H/PCs new hardware. But even if you own one of the original H/PCs, I think you’ll find the improvements worth upgrading to Windows CE 2.0.

Developers Get a Preview

Earlier this year Microsoft provided hardware and software developers a look at things to come for Windows CE. By the time you read this article, Windows CE 2.0 will have been formally announced at the November 1997 COMDEX.

Microsoft’s goals for Windows CE 2.0 for the H/PC were outlined as follows:

1. Enhance the utility of the H/PC for corporate buyers in response to customer, manufacturer and vendor feedback.
2. Support new hardware technologies, including color displays.
3. Upgrade the existing H/PCs.
4. Support the European market.
5. Continue the sales momentum for the H/PCs.

From the demos I saw it appears that the H/PCs are headed in the right direction. It is also clear that Microsoft is relying on third-party developers to enhance the utility of the H/PCs.

New Features of Windows CE 2.0

The first thing you’ll notice about running Windows CE 2.0 for the H/PC is that many of the changes are a direct result of customer feedback. The fonts are more readable - TrueType support is now built in. The Start, and other menus now support "cascading" to speed navigation and to provide a feel much closer to Windows on your desktop (95 or NT.)

Just like its big brothers on the desktop, Windows CE 2.0 for the H/PC now supports an Autohide option for the Taskbar. This causes the taskbar to disappear off the screen when not in use, allowing the space to be used by the applications software. You can also turn the Taskbar’s "Always on top" feature on and off to allow it to remain on screen, but to move down in the stack of active Windows as you launch applications. Finally, there’s a new Desktop button that will minimize whatever number of open application windows you have to display the H/PC desktop.

On my desktop PC with a 17" monitor, I find such features as "autohide" to be unnecessary. But it is a welcome change on the H/PC where screen real estate is much more precious. The user interface now includes a color setting dialog, and a print dialog. That’s right - your H/PC can now support printing from the built-in applications! Microsoft supplies a printer driver for PCL3 (HP LaserJet-compatible) printers. The manufacturers of non-PCL3 printers must provide their own Windows CE drivers.

Another change with Windows CE 2.0 for the H/PC is that the new version of Pocket Internet Explorer lets you browse files on your system, as well as the Internet, in a similar way to Internet Explorer 4.0 for the desktop. You can type in a URL or a file system path into the address bar, and Pocket Internet Explorer will display the web command bar and the web page, or the H/PC’s version of Windows Explorer will display the portion of the file system you selected. The new version of Pocket Internet Explorer provides additional new features similar to the desktop version, including support for frames and secure connections.

The three personal information management programs (Contacts, Calendar and Tasks) are also improved. If you are using Microsoft’s Outlook on your desktop PC, you’ll find it easy to work with the Windows CE 2.0 for the H/PC. Inbox, along with Contacts, Calendar and Tasks have been merged into one application called Microsoft Pocket Outlook. Pocket Outlook closely resembles, and easily synchronizes with Outlook. This cross-product similarity and ease of synchronization is a repeated theme in Microsoft products, encouraging you to purchase their software.

The dialog design is quite similar to Outlook’s, and it now supports filtering and categories. You can even perform group-scheduling tasks from the H/PC, drag across two or more days in Calendar to see multiple days at a glance, add ink notes to appointments contacts and task items, perform a "Find" operation on any Pocket Outlook item (except email), send email or launch a web URL from within Contacts, and use the Go menu to switch between Pocket Outlook components.

International Characters

The initial Windows CE handheld PCs only supported US English characters, leaving the large markets of Europe and Asia unsupported. In fact, of the initial H/PCs, only the Hewlett-Packard 300/320LX, and a later version of the Philips Velo1 included the British Pound sign (the only unique character required to support British English).

Supporting other western European languages is more complex and the solution offered by Windows CE is to use "Unicode". Unicode is a newer, 16-bit, standard for representing characters, that allows up to 64,000 characters instead of the older, 8-bit ASCII which only describes 128 characters (another 128 "extended" characters are possible, but are not part of the standard.) Although a 16-bit character set would normally require twice the storage space, Windows CE uses data compression, so that you will not see any practical difference in size between a text file in Unicode vs. ASCII. The use of Unicode will also allow for support of Eastern languages such as Japanese and Korean. Windows CE 2.0 will not directly support Eastern languages, but individual manufacturers may make special, localized versions of their H/PCs - such as the Japanese version of the Cassiopeia currently available.

Supporting international versions of the operating system requires more than simply expanding the character set. Windows CE 2.0 also allows changing the date and number formats, and even the sorting order - which changes from country-to-country. Other international support includes alternates for currency symbols, days of the week, and case conversions.

New Features of Pocket Office

The "Pocket" versions of the Office Suite have also been improved. Pocket Word now has a much-needed spell checker. Pocket Word 2.0 also does a better job of providing richer formatting features such as tabs, indentation, numbered lists, etc. Pocket Word and Pocket Excel 2.0 both offer support for full screen view, zooming, password protected documents and document templates. Pocket Excel also adds user interface features such as split and freeze panes, and database functions. Macros are still missing from Pocket Excel and some formatting is still not converted properly when documents are transferred to and from a desktop PC and H/PC.

New to the Pocket Office Suite is Pocket PowerPoint. This is the one application missing from Windows CE 1.0 that forced me to carry a laptop around at times. By connecting the H/PC to an external VGA screen (via a PC Card VGA interface, see product listing, page 32) you can make your presentation in 640x480 VGA resolution in 256 colors, even from a gray scale display H/PC! Pocket PowerPoint lets you create and edit slide titles, hide slides, shows slides and notes side by side while projecting the presentation on the VGA PC Card, jump to slides by number, "blackout or whiteout" the slides during a slide show, and rearrange the slide order. The pre-release version demonstrated at the developer’s conference was not fully functional, so a complete review of Pocket PowerPoint will have to wait. I look forward to this application because it will let me carry complete slide presentations on Compact Flash cards, ready at a moment’s notice.

Improved Desktop Connectivity and Device Support

A limitation of Version 1.0 was that you could only partner a single H/PC with a single desktop PC. This is not very practical in a number of circumstances. Many companies rely on a single person, such as a secretary, to manage the appointments for many others in a department. Many sales people and executives do not have their own desktop computers. This means that the secretary is responsible to synchronize multiple H/PCs with a single desktop computer. Windows CE Services 2.0 solves this problem, allowing a single desktop PC to support a number of H/PCs. The other major improvements implemented in Windows CE Services 2.0 include:

• A single H/PC can dock with two Windows-based PCs, and sync with both.
• Inbox e-mail and files can be synchronized along with Calendar, Contacts and Tasks data.
• ActiveSync incorporates the version one sync modes: sync on connect, no sync, and manual sync, and adds continuous sync. That is, while your H/PC and PC are docked, any changes that you make are synchronized automatically. Now you can grab your H/PC and go without having to initiate sync before leaving your desk.
• ActiveSync supports serial, infrared, dial-up from the H/PC either directly to the PC or through a network RAS server, and sync via an Ethernet card!

Windows CE 2.0 also fixed the limitation on the number of memory cards that could be accessed by the H/PC at the same time. Version 1.0 H/PCs such as the Hewlett- Packard 320LX came with two card slots, but could only access one memory card at a time (however, you could use a modem card in one slot and a memory card in the other.) Windows CE 2.0 allows up to nine memory cards at a time (although no current H/PC has more than two.)

There is also improved support for wireless networking in the new version of Windows CE. Wireless modems often send data in odd order, requiring the receiving device to put things back in the original order. Version 1.0 was not very good at this, so the efficiency of wireless communications suffered. Version 2.0 fixes some of the technical problems regarding the way e-mail, and other information is received, improving the speed and reliability of wireless networking.

There are many other subtle improvements in the core of the operating system, but I will save the discussion of them for a future article. One thing to mention is that unlike what we’ve come to expect from new versions of software, the kernel of Windows CE Version 2.0 is actually smaller and a bit faster than Version 1.0.

Java Support

Windows CE 2.0 has another surprise: The operating system provides a "Java Virtual Machine." JAVA is the "universal" programming language that is quickly becoming the language of choice for the Internet. The idea of JAVA is that a "virtual computer" is defined that any computer can pretend to be, that is, emulate. The JAVA applications are written in the language of the virtual computer, and each real computer interprets the commands in its native language. Microsoft’s support for the Java virtual machine is based on JDK 1.1

This is an important development that can further the effort to develop programs that can run on any computer, from powerful workstations to tiny handhelds. It also adds a significant advantage for Windows CE handhelds over other handhelds that don’t offer such support.

Windows CE on new computers

With Version 2.0, Microsoft is supporting many additional CPU processors. These include the Intel x86 series, which may include some very low-power versions of the 80486, or even Pentium processors; the Motorola PowerPC; and the ARM and StrongArm (available in a future release after Windows CE 2.0). StrongARM is the low-power, high-speed processor currently used in the Newton MP2000. With all these new chips and new devices with faster hardware designs and clock rates of the existing CPUs, expect to see some faster H/PCs available soon.

Windows CE not just for the H/PC!

Microsoft wants a version of Windows to be used everywhere computers are used: Windows NT for Network servers and corporate desktops, Windows 95 (soon to be Windows 98) for the home computer, Windows CE for everything else. We used to hear jokes about washing machines running Windows. Well that’s exactly where Microsoft is aiming. No, they don’t actually expect you to use a mouse to operate your kitchen blender. In fact, for some devices, such as a microwave oven, you might not even notice that much has changed. The basic idea is this: Currently there are a number of specialized operating systems (with names such as OS9, VRTX and PDOS) that are used inside computer controlled appliances, industrial controllers and other computerized automation. Programmers must learn the controls and other details of each new operating system they work with. If there is one predominate operation system (Windows CE) for all of these devices, then programmers can focus on learning that system. And since there are currently a large number of programmers who work with Windows, there will be less training needed for them to write their applications for Windows CE than for one of the many, lesser-known operating systems.

The idea of having one system to learn is attractive, but there are other considerations. First, the computer processors in most appliances are very simple and inexpensive. They need very little memory or processing power to do their simple jobs. Windows CE represents a relatively large operating system that requires more powerful and expensive processors. Will the added features be worth the added expense?

Next, there’s the cost of testing. The simplicity of existing small appliance controllers make them more predictable. It’s possible to test most, if not all, conditions that they will encounter relatively easily (can you imagine a combination of button presses on your microwave oven that haven’t been tried by the manufacturer?) On the other hand, Windows CE is a highly sophisticated and complex package. Because of differences in the way Windows operating systems behave, it is much more difficult, if not impossible, to test every combination of events. Finally, there is the issue of simplicity. Customers don’t want a toaster with a complex user interface. While using Windows CE as the operating system for a home appliance does not necessitate a complicated user interface, the Windows CE operating system has a lot more capabilities. Designers will need to resist adding to many "bells and whistles." It will be interesting to see how Windows CE develops for embedded controller applications. Since Microsoft purchased WebTV, I would imagine that we will see Windows CE in a "set- top" TV box as one of the first applications for Windows CE outside of the H/PCs.

Recommendations

If you’ve been waiting to buy an H/PC, it’s time to take a closer look at what’s available now and what’s coming. Windows CE 2.0 supports color displays, so expect that in the future. But color H/PCs are likely to cost more and have reduced battery life. If you currently use a Windows CE handheld PC, you’ll probably find the upgrade well worth the price. Windows CE 2.0 fixes problems, adds features, and makes the H/PC a little easier to use. I especially like the addition of Pocket PowerPoint Viewer. If you give a lot of presentations, this addition alone is worth the upgrade.
 

Windows CE 2.0 Windows CE 2.0 comes with a number of new applications and time-saving features. The screens below are in color and will appear as such on H/PCs with color displays. Windows CE 2.0 gives a new cascading menus feature off of the Start button, making it easier to locate and access programs and documents on the H/PC. Windows CE 2.0 brings users a Pocket version of PowerPoint. Users can connect to a VGA monitor and display color slides, even if their H/PC has a grey scale screen. Windows CE 2.0 comes with a new Pocket version of Windows Explorer, now accessed in a submenu of the programs menu. It incorporates many new web-like features including Forward and Back buttons and a Favorites menu. Inbox, along with Contacts, Calendar and Tasks have been merged into one application called Microsoft Pocket Outlook. Inbox e-mail and files can be synchronized with the desktop Inbox, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks data.