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'."

Comments

Re:poke-windows?

[Millennium]

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.

Re:Learn from Microsofts failure

[Zoltar]

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.

Reminds me of the 70's

[kmcardle]

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. ;>

--

Re:A little point...

[dingbat_hp]

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.

Re:Learn from Microsofts failure

[konstant]

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

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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?

Windows "Powered" Windows "CE" Has its place.

[cybrthng]

Windows CE devices are great. The OS may not be the best, but they work.

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.

Re:Windows "Powered" Windows "CE" Has its place.

[Zigg]

Congratulations, you have found the device that you want for your needs.

I had a handheld CE device for some time. Its touchscreen recently broke so it's only usable with the keyboard. But even before then, I had the following beefs with it:

1. Its scheduling app was not something that made sense on a handheld or palm-based device. It felt just like a copy of Outlook (which ties in with point #3, btw.)

2. The traditional Windows GUI metaphors just don't work on handheld devices. I mean, come on, we're going to simulate right-clicking by holding down Alt and tapping?

3. It only syncs with Microsoft products. I can't emphasize enough how terrible that really is. I've been slowly migrating to FreeBSD and Linux more and more for all my ``desktop'' work. They do a good job of being compatible with each other. However, my H/PC, as well as Outlook itself (which can import iCal/vCard but can't export them), hold the data I've trusted them with very close and don't let it go.

CE just bothers me. Its interface is unintuitive for doing what I expect a handheld or palm unit to do first and foremost -- calendaring and contacts. I'm getting a Visor as soon as I can. (Ironically enough, where I used to work, an engineer recently sold his Nino after having offered it for several months. But another tech who has a Palm III just mentions in passing he might be upgrading to a newer Palm and there are already three people lined up to buy it.)

Re:Learn from Microsofts failure

[Gurlia]

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.

Re:Free the source (hypocrisy for fun and profit)

[rc-flyer]

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.

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 /. is available at:

http://slashdot.org/code.shtml


Their only requirement is that you link back to /. if you use their code.

I liked Wince,

[Forge]

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.

Learn from Microsofts failure

[Markee]

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.