A Windows CE Shell For Netbooks

nerdyH writes "Netbooks such as the Acer Aspire One and Lenovo Ideapad S9 usually ship with SSD storage and the Linux operating system in low-end configurations, or else with hard drives and Windows XP Home at the higher end of the market. Therefore, customers who want a "Windows experience" have no choice but to shell out for extra RAM and disk storage, potentially impacting battery life. Perhaps not for long. Quarta Mobile says its open-source (yes, open source) "MID-Shell for Windows Embedded CE 6.0" provides a Microsoft-based alternative to Linux for low-end devices with SSDs (solid state disks)."

Comments

Well, not quite

[Weaselmancer]

It does work. Same way a brick flies, but it does work. (Disclaimer: I'm a Windows CE developer by trade)

You're looking at the wrong market. Around CE 3.0 when SmartPhone came out, yeah. That completely sucked. Hardly worked at all.

Windows CE's market share is in industrial devices that need to talk to Windows desktops. And PDAs. That's why it sells. It's an extension of the MS monopoly into the embedded market space. If you need to get data from a widget to a Windows box, you use Windows CE. At least that's the sales pitch, anyways.

Back on topic, CE on a Netbook? Yeah - no thanks. It would be no different than a PDA. Just bulkier.

Re:Who would want that?

[roc97007]

> My Windows Mobile smart phone runs quite a few programs that you'd desire.

My Windows Mobile smartphone crashed and hung more often than my Windows XP desktop, required frequent reboots, and would not reliably make a noise at an incoming call. My expectation of a solid state laptop-like device is to be more reliable than my PC, not less.

For example, Windows Mobile seems to want to keep your applications persistent after you've dismissed them, apparently for faster starting when you go back to them later. This tends to cause the device to run slower and slower over time, requiring the user to periodically go into the task manager and kill apps, or, if they're not a total geek, just punch the reset button and wait through yet another reboot. It's design decisions like this (and many others) which makes Windows Mobile such a miserable experience if you try to use it for anything other than the built-in applets that are fed by Activesync.

Parenthetically, I don't understand the vendors who are trying to paste an iPhone-like interface on top of Mobile 6. Like that's going to fix it. Mind you, having to punch Start... wait for the GUI to catch up... navigate... wait... navigate again... choose application... can get tedious, but it is not, by far, the only issue.