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Wince at WinCE's New Name: 'Windows Powered'
Lycestra writes "CNet has an article stating Windows CE is being renamed. In the spirit of such names as Office, Money, and Explorer, it is being renamed "Windows Powered". I expected something more like 'Poke-Windows'."
"It's just as slow, completely unstable, and 1/8 the size."
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
and here it is in clickable form: /media/col/shal/1999/11/30/naming/index.html .
http://www.salon.com
Its pretty entertaining, these people are crazy:
It's this sort of chutzpah that makes the namers at Landor see red. "The Internet is filled with arrogance," says Amy Becker coldly. "You might have a provocative, fun name. But do you have the basis for a lasting brand? We still don't know how compelling a brand Yahoo will be 10 years from now. I sense a real missed opportunity."
"Let's put it this way," says Redhill. "Over the years, we have created and sustained many of the world's most durable brands. We make a lot more hits than companies who think up their own symbols and names. I'm not suggesting that a company couldn't get it right with a stroke of insight or genius or luck. But if it's your own brand, how can you possibly be objective? I mean, would you name your own baby?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
OGL does not run on top of DirectX. Infact now Hardware companys are spending more time on OGL drivers then Direct3d drivers now, beacuse Quake and all its dirivatives run on GL. Since quake is the 'standard' in gaming, cards that run quake better sell better. (This is especialy true of nVidia.)
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Java is proprietary to.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Oh, great. Now you've got me started...
"Jupiter Netscape Crash!"
"Mars Pentium Processor Ignite!"
"Venus Beowulf Chain Encircle!"
"Mercury Microsoft Blast!"
And of course my favorite...
"Moon Kernel Compilation!"
Sorry about the dub attacks; they seemed more appropriate somehow.
Microsoft main goal is to monopolize digital television.
I respectfully disagree with you.
First, yes MS has been putting some major resources into their W2K push, however I don't feel that relates directly with the palm market. MS has such enormous resources I really can't believe that they are limiting efforts in one area due to any other area.
Second, I don't think MS wants to *just* have a market presence in any market, they want to dominate. (As any company would)
Third, I think that MS misjudged (thus far) what the palm market wants. They probably assumed that the standard marketing methods combined with their powerfull distribution channels and the Microsoft/Windows brand would allow them to win by default.
Fourth, If they learned anything from their early (lack of) internet strategies it was that you shouldn't underestimate the potential of any given market. The palm/wireless market might be small potatoes today but it is poised to explode over the next few years. I really don't think they want to miss this boat.
Back in the 1970's, Japanese car companies were very quietly working to make their products better, cheaper, and more fuel efficient.
;>
American car companies were changing the positions of the headlights.
I'm sure ms could have spent the marketing focus group money on hiring some talent to make wince better. Or they just could have bought Handspring (is that right?) and manufactured Palm clones. Oh wait, maybe the DOJ would have frowned on that.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
Is it me, or does that thing sound like (ahem) Prince?
You know, the old saw: "The Operating System formerly known as Windows CE..." =)
Sorry: "The Operating System formerly known as WinCE..."
And what does that "CE" stands for? "Crash Extremely fast"? "Carry Excess bagagge?" "Could not Exchange data with desktop?"
And what about the new name -- "Powered by Windows"? Why not "Crashed by Windows"? That's more like it...
Don't you just love heaping scorn on the largest software company in the world? What are we going to do once it has faded back into a richly deserved irrelevence?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I think the consumer cares [...]
I don't.
I think they used to. Back in the days when PDAs were rare and expensive, they were bought by geeks who cared about such things. Now we're moving to a more mature (sic) market, where they're bought by the naive, or bought as gifts, and sold by the untrained and simian. Increasingly, the only differentiable features between PDAs will be the logo on the case and an inaccurate display card on the shelf at Electrode Hut.
Take a walk through Electrode Hut sometime and listen to people buying real retail products from the real retail sales chain (all shrinkwrap developers should do this regularly). They don't understand the technical issues, and if the sales staff even mention them, they frequently get it wrong (the number of mis-sold Palm IIIe I over-hear !). Maybe you and I know that colour means unusable battery life, but very few retail purchasers do.
But the new name? Ugh. All the devices say "Powered by Windows CE." Now, they get to say:
Powered by Windows Powered.
A bit redundant, no?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Absolutely! I can't find hardly anything IN Win-CE, or Windows for that matter, that isn't proprietary. The only things that seem to get made in some semblance of standardness are those that get crammed down Micro$oft's throat! (Can you say JAVA?)
"Bah!" - Dogbert
On the H/PC, go to your desktop sometime, hold down Alt, and tap one of the icons. That's your ``right tap''. Anyway, the thrust of that point was originally that the reason I dislike CE is because they are trying to fit a desktop metaphor into a handheld or palm unit, and I don't think it makes sense. Tom Christiansen's recent article on interface zen explains it better than I can.
And I beg to differ that free != good. In the world of development tools, the freer they are, the better -- because you can count on more varied applications being available as well as lots of apps that will mimic the freeness of the development tools and will be able to be improved on by many people. CE seems to, probably because the devel tools are so expensive, encourage locking up of apps and code.
Anyway, I can see we're not going to reach an agreement on this one. :-)
also have a look at this article by c't (german). use babelfish to translate it. it has some interesting thoughts why microsoft changed the name.
--
www.game-over.ch - Jesus rules!
--
You know, WinCE has been around for quite a while (never doing very well, but been out a while) and they never had a problem with the name.
:) And I hope to all of the rest of us thinking beings... You can change the name, but the truth will tell. Although the truth often has a difficult time against M/$ FUD...
;)
I may be dense, but it was only recently that I saw a post pointing out the "wince" moniker and had a good chuckle at something I hadn't recognized before. Has this reference been around a long time, or has it recently become more popular? Has the mainstream media never picked up on it before?
Perhaps we slashdotters/techies/geeks/truly intelligent beings have more power than we think. If our use of the term has the potential to bring it into use in the mainstream... could this be the reason for this change now? The desire to do some revisionist FUD and try to head off this allegedly derogatory reference at the pass?
Well, it will always be "wince" to me.
Of course it's still called "Boulder" Dam to me, not Hoover. And, damn it, I learned to spell Czechoslavakia in the 5th grade (could do it in my sleep the way the teacher drilled us), what am I going to do with that little piece of now useless knowledge?
Enough of changing the names of stuff.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
We all know how version numbers are inflated for marketing purposes. Using dates such as Windows 98 or October Gnome actually make sense though, being release dates not version numbers, which is a lot more comprehensable by the public.
However, it's not that simple anymore as product names are completely revamped as well. Windows NT is now called Windows 2000, the single-user variant will now be called Millennium instead. And now Windows CE is called Powered.
Looks like Redmond thinks that renaming a product throws away all the legacy and actually makes the product better. Unfortunately the marketing droids are actually able to sell that story to a lot of people too.
Microsoft has been fighting to get it's feet into the market of non-desktop computers. Looks as if they didn't succeed.
:)
I disagree. My impression of Microsoft's efforts in this arena is that they are reserving a slice of market/mindshare in the palmtop market so that they don't have to "get their feet in" when the company really decides to care.
Most of the recent Microsoft promotion has dealt with Windows2000, a system clearly designated for machines well out of the palmtop range. M$ is aware that the market may eventually pay more attention to palmhelds, but their most recent mantra change from "A computer on every desk in every home" to "Great products anywhere anytime" is more oriented towards providing "services" from Win2k servers to PC users. Microsoft apparently thinks palmtops will be used to access those services, but it does not envision the PC obsolescing any time soon. If and when the palmtop becomes a truly large market (on the scale of the personal computer) then M$ won't have to claw its way into a PalmOS-dominated market. It will at least have a name and presence to trade upon.
However, this does not diminish the possibility that a stripped-down Linux version might do something similar in the mean time. Otherwise we'll all be demonizing The Monopolist Palm in 10 years
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I recently got a palm III, after comparing them to WinCE devices. I decided I wanted the extra battery life and a OS designed for a small platform, not a cut-down-yet-another API to support version of windows. So they rename WinCE, so people will still realize it's still the same ball game. The PDA game goes on. It's been said before, but spiliting windows into so many versions is *very* bad, you gotta admit, no matter what your views are on MS.
But one thing is sure, "Windows Powered" probably aren't gonna be better than the current WinCE crop. MS should just break down and liscence/use/enhance either PalmOS or EPOC32 or some other suitable PDA OS, imho. I don't think I'm the only one who sees no future in WinCE, thou IANASE (I Am Not A Software Engineer)
David
bash: ispell: command not found
This sig left intentionally blank.
Re-nameing WINCE won't help all that much. A properly written version would. (Yes, I KNOW a properly written piece of software is beyond the scope of Micro$oft but it's still true.)
Somewhat Off-Topic: The only thing that I had a problem with was that most manufacturers have, until recently, put WINCE into ROM giving us no other option. If it's flashable at least we'd have the choice to test it for ourselves and decide which we want to use.
Does anybody know if the ROM thing was a MS requirement early on?
Regardless of all that - unless the O/S has changed much they'll probably continue to lose out to Palm(tm) or Visor(tm) on sales. It's hoggish for resources and very proprietary - end of story.
I think it's the "If we can't dazzle them with brilliance..." routine.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
I am not looking forward to this latest mutilation of my language... :P
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Happy sticking!
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
doh!
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Constructive criticism noted. :)
:)
I guess I cant spell Czechoslovakia in my sleep after all.
That will teach me to type and proofread before I am truly awake. Maybe my future posts should occur later in the day.
Russ
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
wee Windows prod
down, swore, wiped!
worse down, wiped!
wiped, drowns woe
we do per Windows
owed per Windows
we respond "widow"
redwood WINpews
endows Word wipe
weep, disown Word
And this interesting pair:
we window dopers
pro windows weed
Get yours at http://www.anagramfun.com/cgi-bin/anagrams.cgi
And remember - Microsoft is the master of marketing, so take a clue from them: if your product doesn't sell, change it's name!
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Figure this. My Cassiopeia E-105 has 32 megs of ram, i have a compact flash IBM MicroDrive with over 340 megs of storage.
I get all of the following features
Music MP3 or WMF
PIM Software
Not only music, stereo sound
65K colors, active matrix screem
Small, sturdy device
WindowsCE lets me code easily for network applications, it lets me surf the web, port over existing applications, and follows the same legacy as the Desktop OS.
Windows CE makes a powerfull embedded OS. Infact it may do too much for being embedded, but it works.
I've long since ditched all my other PDA's and handhelds and enjoy my handheld pc.
Plus, i've got GCC compiling WindowsCE binaries for mips processors now, and will be releasing a Cygwin based version for people to download, and i will help support open source applications under WindowsCE because WindowsCE gets the job done, and rather well.
I essentially agree with you on your points about why Wince has problems -- forcing inappropriate metaphors and techniques onto the UI for handheld device.
;-)
It is worth pointing out that Unix learned this long ago. The GUI in Unix is not bound up in the OS itself, like it is on Windows. Even if you run X, the "look and feel" can be changed at will. This is one of Unix's greatest strengths.
Linux does an even better job. One of the reasons Linux scales so well between platforms is that you have the complete source. Thus, if you are targeting an embedded system, you can reconfigure the kernel to exclude inappropriate and unneeded parts, and recompile.
I am not sure if the X protocol would be appropriate for a handheld device. On the one hand, X tends to have a lot of overhead, enough to swamp a device like the Palm Pilot. On the other hand, hardware keeps improving all the time, and having a single protocol for the low-level graphics interface has some nice advantages. I've used a prototype of Compaq's Itsy, and it runs X on a credit card sized screen with no apparent performance problem. And the ability to run a program on a big machine, but have it display on a handheld with a wireless connection, would be very cool. I think only time will tell how this will turn out.
Of course, if you went the X route on a handheld, the UI toolkits used by most of the software for the handheld would have to be different, or you run into the same problems as Wince. But building on the foundation of X would still have advantages, and you could run a "desktop UI style" program in a pinch if you had do.
Anyone else here remember PC/GEOS from GeoWorks? It was a GUI for MS-DOS that enabled multitasking, long file names, and more cool stuff, all on an 8086 CPU. There was also a version of it for PDA's (Tandy's now-defunct Zoomer being the most popular one to use it, IIRC). One of the really neat things about GEOS was the fact that the GUI functions were abstracted before being presented to the applications. Thus, you could take a program from the desktop version, put in on the handheld, and its UI would change to a pen-based metaphor automatically. Very cool.
Just my 1/4 of a byte.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
There must be some old meaning to CE!
A lot of people have been saying it means "Compact Edition", but I always heard "Consumer Electronics". And if you think about it, Microsoft would never call it "Compact Edition", because that would admit that "regular" Windows is not compact.
There are also the jokes:
- Crashes Easy
- Crashed Everything
- Caveat Emptor
- Chaotic Evil
- Cannot Execute
- Complete Excrement
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
We can go from WinCE to WinP. Either way you accurately describe your computing experience. Works for me.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ahh, the wonder of configurability in Linux! As I've said couple of times already, I believe that to do something well, you've got to have that thing as your focus. In this context, it means that for an OS to integrate well in a palmtop, it has to be configured, designed, for palmtops.
Now the beauty of Linux is that it's not inseparably bound to a particular GUI, like Windows is. The Linux kernel can be adapted more easily than Windows can to the palmtop platform, IMHO. But of course, only the kernel and a few basic system apps should be the same as a PC Linux configuration... an X server, or KDE, etc., may not fit very well in this scenario, and attempting to shoe-horn things is always a sign that something is not quite right with your configuration. What we really want is a UI that is specifically directed at palmtops. Anything less than that would simply not fit.
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
And it's common practise for businesses and politicians to register a trademarked name across as many domains as they can. So are you whining like a 2 year old because you wanted slashdot.org or because you want Rob to pay you for slashdot.com?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Customer: "My palmtop won't turn on"
Help-Desk: "It's run out of batteries"
Customer: "No, it doesn't use batteries, it's Windows Powered"
It's like those morons who buy a Honda Civic HF, and slap V-Tec stickers all over them.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This is a misconception that is unfair to the individuals who work as programmers at Microsoft. It also may cause many free software advocates to underestimate Microsoft's programming abilities. Microsoft has some excellent programmers - even the WinCE team must have some first rate people. The problem is that these folks are often forced to do hideous things to the code for the wrong reasons - for marketing purposes, to subvert desirable standards, to present a moving target to prevent cloning, for backward compatibility with decade old hardware and software... If Microsoft programmers were allowed to write the best software they could - period - without worrying about screwing the competition or subverting existing standards, they would have some of the best apps and OSes in the world. But they don't, because Marketing and Management have fsck'ed up their programmers with many often conflicting requirements. This isn't just a programmer dilemma, btw. Those of you following the trial will probably notice how often, and how badly, Microsoft's execs lied during the trial. They repeatedly shot themselves in the collective foot (partially)by trying to cover too many bases. Dislike Microsoft as a corporation if you wish - I certainly do - dislike specific Microsoft executives if you wish, but don't slag Microsoft programmers as a group. They're no less competent and no more evil than any other group of programmers.
Boy, the number of totally clueless and blind readers never fails to amaze me. First you have this non-sensicle posting about freeing the source (even though the source code for /. has always been available, look at the number of /. powered sites out there), then you get a few other idiots who don't even bother to read a previous reply which specifically states that the source is available and even where to find it.
/. is available at:
/. if you use their code.
I don't even know why the original posting was moderated up. Seems like a moderator was also clueless (which makes sence, considering that the moderators are also the same clueless idiots who read and post these totally stupid comments)
Before I get flamed for this, the source code for
http://slashdot.org/code.shtml
Their only requirement is that you link back to
-- Error: Cannot find file REALITY.SYS - Universe halted, please reboot!
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Wince was appropriate, it made sense. Every time somebody asked me to configure a Wince based palmtop for a PC, I winced at the thought that a power user would need help. Then I winced at the difficulty of doing it myself.
Now It's "Windows Powered" which can be abbreviated WinPed, [pronounced wimped], for what people do when faced with the new levels of difficulty in using this thing. A few clients have already winped out and gone back to Palm.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
This name seems too blatantly misleading to me. The implication of a logo that says "Windows Powered" is that the thing that the logo is on is running a product named Windows (or contains a "windows chip"). It's a bit like naming an electric car "V8 powered". Believe it or not (given what some companies get away with), there are some rules against this sort of thing.
"When you buy a device, you buy a complete thing--it's not like a PC where you can upgrade the thing whenever you want to," said Phil Holden, product manager for Microsoft's Windows CE group, in explaining the change. "When we're talking to the broader consumer, it's pretty clear that customers care what the device does, but not so much what the underlying operating system is."
I think the consumer cares about a device that works without crashing, that runs quick, and doesn't drain power so you don't have to drag several sets of batteries around with you.
This name change will generate hordes of clueless users that will come back to vendors asking "It says its Windows powered - How can I install Microsoft Office 97 on it?"
Microsoft should concentrate on getting it to work right, and getting it so that its compatible with Windows. If thier programmers were as good as thier marketing people, I don't think anyone would be complaining so much about Microsoft.
I can buy a package to let me cross compile win32s apps under linux, solaris, hpux and such. You can buy the source.
There is a difference between proprietary and free. Say you have the Specs to MP3, thats the same information you have from Windows. You have the Specs to the API, But you have to lease the decoder from franhaufer or however it is spelled or write your own. Just like microsoft, you would have to lease the rights to the api or write your won.
But the specs are out, you can buy a 3 book series that describes them all in detail.
Microsoft may A) Own it B) Wrote it C) Use it, but it is the standard and therefore A) not proprietary B) Fully Documented C) Portable (ahem.. powerPC, Mips, X86, Arm).
The new pejorative.
It'll catch on before "Windows Powered" ever does.
And the point is?? Buzzword bingo again, sad thing is it actually works. People fall for the nice shine the M$ marketing merkins put on things. You can spray paint rust, and it may look like new, but it's stil rust, and it will still crumble eventually.
Surely this is wrong? There must be some old meaning to CE!
I mean, NT used to stand for "New Technology", although Micros~1 newspeak nowadays denies that. I can't believe they use a name that do not have any connotation.
Lars
--
Reality or nothing.
You forget that Microsoft must be free to innovate. So if they want it to sound like their gadgets get their power, ie. charge or energy-source, from Windows, they must be free to reinvent the english language for the benefit of the unenlightened consumer.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Microsoft has been fighting to get it's feet into the market of non-desktop computers. Looks as if they didn't succeed.
Linux can and must learn from this.
Same OS for different classes of devices is good for the company, but not necessarily for the customer. A software company can reduce maintenance costs by reducing the number of code bases. However, having the same look and feel for a Desktop PC and a set-top box or a wristwatch is, in my opinion, not desirable.
A UI that was designed for choosing among 20 or more applications, switching back and forth between them, adding and configuring hardware and do extensive networking and interoperability is not the ideal UI for, say, a handheld device that features three applications, syncs automatically when in the cradle and must be usable by everyone who learned how to read a clock.
Why is the Palm OS more successful in the palmtop arena? Because it is not an adapted desktop PC OS, but a genuine handheld device OS. (Imagine it on a desktop PC with a mouse - wouldn't work!) I hope that Linux won't make the same mistake. I'd love to see Linux on a lot of sub-PC class devices, but please don't expect it to feature a full-blown X server or even KDE or whatever. Make it a small, efficient, stable and secure Linux subset with a dedicated user interface. Let Microsoft go astray on its own.
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?