Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP Embedded
Embedded Geek writes: "Embedded Systems Programming has a piece
about Microsoft organizing its employees to advocate their embedded products in online newsgroups (part of "a new culture at Microsoft" making "an effort to shed the company's reputation as an incommunicative giant.") This is coordinated with Microsoft's launch of Windows XP Embedded at their Embedded Developers' Conference (the countdown clock on their homepage says Wednesday but the launch party is Thursday)." News.com notes that this will be used in slot machines and ATMs. Insert obligatory free-money joke.
Where smallness, understandability, low power consumption, and bullet-proof reliability are the key factors. I don't know who would put XP in a critical device. I don't know who would put Linux in one either, for that sake. "Embedded" in the Microsoft sense must mean "PDAs and museum kiosks" and such, and not the traditional embedded market.
While I was at MSFT over the summer, a friend at work asked me why Open Source projects had such a community around them no matter how small they were while it seemed harder for MSFT products to build a community around them (as opposed to users which they had plenty of). He mistakenly assumed that the availability of source code was what built the community which from my minor participation in a number of Open Source projects was incorrect.
The main reason users tend to form a community around Open Source projects is that there is direct communication between the users of the product and the developers of the product without the layer of bullshit introduced by marketing and management. If I post to the dbXML, Scoop or JDEE mailing list, I know I'll get at least one response from an actual developer of the product who will make a solid attempt to solve my problem as opposed to paying umpteen dollars to be put on hold by some pimply faced teenager who probably couldn't code his way out of a paper bag.
While at MSFT I planned to evangelize such a user-centric view of interaction but never got around to doing it on as large a scale as I liked. I did however try my best to make sure that as many questions to the newsgroup of our product were answered by someone at MSFT, if not me then someone whom I felt could answer the question. It looks that finally some like minded people are springing up in other parts of MSFT.
Now I know this probably won't happen..but the mention of ATM got my attention.
Wouldn't the use of and embeded version of XP, which will be used for authentication and disbursement of monies, be an incentive for MS to get people and banks to use it's Passport service for authentication/verification etc?
Think about it. They want to get spending data etc, so this would be the perfect opportunity. Now I'm not bashing MS for making an embeded version of XP.
We all know CE wasn't the best...but still are making money out of it and they can most likely capitalize on XP's new features.
Personally I'd stick w/ whatever was already out there for the banking systems...I trust them more than I do MS.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe I am still living in my cave (urr, office) but how many devices did actually have CE in it. Outside of the normal PDA. I have seen and heard about Linux (and BSD) being in things like, printers, "plug-and-play" servers (like those toys from Colbalt), etc.
:)
There is a machine at the family business called a Holtzma. Its a German made saw. Its made to cut entire books of plywood (MCP, pine, or whatever). They have 3 of them, one with simple switches which is *VERY* old. The second has a digital display but looks like a custom OS. The newest one has a Windows machine build in. (I can't wait for the day when I walk by, see the blue seen of death, and get to say those famous words
Anyway, the point behind the saw is that this would be the perfect place for Linux. The PC running it currently has to be a fast machine, becuase of the Windows requirements. Linux however, could use much lower requirements. Plus, take a window manager like blackbox, or other small window manager, to make it simple, small, nice user interface. Since people aren't using things like office suites, you could rip a lot of crap out of it.
Security on such a machine is also a big concern. Wouldn't it be great if your employee didn't feel like working that day, fired up regedit and made a few small changes ? You could imagine all of the other things that could be done. Since its Windows, theres always a false sense of security.
I assume in a few years companys like them would start getting smarter about it. People don't want propritary systems, they want something simple and small. Windows, has too many toys built into it that can't be removed. Plus, when you start looking at the outrages licensing ammounts for Windows. Linux, starts looking VERY nice.
To get Linux being used in a serious way, alls it would take is for a large PDA company like Palm to start offearing it on a few Palm Pilots. (Maybe create a few models with it, just to test the waters). People would start fogetting about Palm OS pretty quick. Other companys would surley follow.
</soapbox>
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Most of us have always been like me: when we comment, we acknowledge our association with MS,
... excuse me, cosupport, of a bill that would have banned most free software, not to mention other activities by the RIAA and MPAA as well) of why they are trying to hijack the internet and sqelch the "unorderly" information that has abounded since the formation of the Internet and in particular the world wide web, empowering anyone to speak out and share their opinion and whatever information they may have in a very organic and most unorderly fashion.
ahem. Some of you acknowledge your bias, however many, many of you do not. So much so, and on so many occasions, that Microsoft astroturfing has become a cliche on slashdot, kuro5hin, and numerous other forums.
We need to protect that orderly flow of information.
Which underscores Microsoft's philosophy (and to be fair, others. Let's not forget Disney's cosponsorship
Please, spare us the insult to our intelligence by trying to rewrite Microsoft's most recent history in its interaction with this site, the free software community, and the internet at large. Such flimsy attempts to mislead the public are only amusing for so long and I, for one, grow weary of such nonsense.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What embedded systems do you work on ? Most embedded systems (controllers, switches etc etc) run a very very small RTOS, DOS is not an RTOS (Real Time Operating System).
DOS is not an RTOS, Linux is not an RTOS. These systems are not really talking about embedded stuff at all, they are talking about small PC architectures, which have their place. But embedded is about small footprint and 100% reliability. I wouldn't like to know that the medical controller my life relied upon was using DOS.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The display you see for example on ATMs I suspect is just as easy to draw regardless of the OS you use. You're writing embedded systems, which means you are likely to write your own drivers anyways. If you are going to run XP, you certainly have the space/power to run a library like SDL which can do everything XP can do graphically AND remain much less dependent on your platform.
I am not trying to bash windows (okay, I am kinda), but just point out that an OS used primarily as a windowing system, may not be the best pick for a non-windowing system. Its like having windows on PDAs. The screens are barely big enough to show just one window, why would someone want overlapping windows?
Isn't the point of modding stuff up to give points to posts that are worthwhile. A post that gets a "heh" out of me, doesn't deserve a +5.
The problem is that at the beginning of a story a post can receive serveral moderations at once. Like one person mods it up, while 3 other people are still glancing over the front page deciding what they want to mod, so those 3 mod it up, all thinking they'll just bump it up to a +2, but instead gets a +5 because lots of people do the same thing.
In short, moderators should not be able to mod a post up that has changed karma points since the viewing of the post.
Thank you.
The bloatware charge is and always has been bogus. People don't seem to understand that the value of a 3 year old PC is $150 and so there is no particular reason why Microsoft should limit a $100/$200 O/S so that it can run under the constraints of that machine.
Because people don't buy OLD computers to run new operating systems, they buy NEW ones. And NEW computers are not $150. So not only do you have to shell out another $200 for a bloated OS, you have to spend 2000 bucks for a system that'll run it.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden