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.

Embedded in what?

In a S/390?

This is not the traditional embedded market

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.

Re:How fun

No, man, working for Microsoft ROCKS! I LOVE this company! I LOVE THIS COMPANY! Who told you to sit down?! Did I mention how awesome Microsoft embedded systems are? They ROCK!

replaces embedded NT

that already is running lots of ATM's out there. Do you ever see a BSOD on a cashpoint - I haven't?

Given the increase in complexity and code size its going to be interesting to see how it goes into devices.

Re:replaces embedded NT

If you're talking about the message "At least one service or device driver failed during startup. Check event log for details." then that's OK. All the NT systems I've ever seen (OK, the ones I've set up) do this - that's how you know it's working properly.

Re:replaces embedded NT

No, the banking industry would NEVER run Windows on their ATMs! [daimyo.org]

Impressive

Wow. It turns out you only need 512 MB RAM, 1 gig of storage and a 900MHz CPU on your embedded device to run this.

Wait a minute...

Knunov

they have no chance

Embedded means small and fast, both of which cannot be done with Windows CE,Embedded NT, Embedded XP.

This is why 60% of all embedded systems are DOS and then Linux (The linux side is growing fast.... and I mean really fast) and then specalized.

If Microsoft can demonstrate a single floppy version of XP that needs only 4 meg of ram or less to run and leave room for my app then I'll take them serious.

Until then Microsoft products are not looked at as a serious alternative or solution, they are too expensive to impliment in the hardware requirements.

Re:they have no chance

Unfortunately, you have no idea what most people mean when they say "embedded".

Let's be clear: MS doesn't care about the market for headless, extremely small embedded OS's. They want the area where people interact with the device, browse the internet, use email, etc. Basically they want the kiosk, the set-top box, and other similiar markets.

When people see embedded, they think "Linux Router project" - that's an "embedded" version of Linux acting as a router of course.

MS is competing here with people like QNX, who are trying to capture the mostly-vaporous "rich" device market.

So, yes, MS is useless for ultra-small headless/static devices that you mention, but MS is making strong inroads in "rich" device category (even if that industry hasn't really caught hold in widescale operations).

60% DOS.... my arse

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.

Microsoft invents Customer Feedback

That perception, Microsoft says, is precisely why everyone on the development team of its Talisker embedded operating system now logs hours every week, chatting about the OS in news groups, checking out "bug reports" on a dedicated Web site and meeting with users face-to-face at "plugfests," where they discuss Talisker programming experiences.

Congrats to Microsoft for inventing web based [gnu.org] bug tracking [sourceforge.net]. Truly this is a great day for software.

Finally Learning From The Open Source Community

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 [google.com] 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.

We've always been out listening

It's just that we don't identify ourselves by our names. Most of us have always been like me: when we comment, we acknowledge our association with MS, but we don't give out any identifying information. I pass on the commentary that I pick up here to my product group. Frankly, I think that the Pocket PC is stronger for it.

There are two classes of reasons that we don't use our real names. First, we as individuals don't want to get spammed any more than we already do. Individuals from MS have been targeted and stalked in the past; none of us wants to be the victim of some kook. Second, the company has a right to manage its own messages. Sometimes, obviously, that's a bad thing; our quiet lets the company get away with lying. Usually, though, there are a number of of people who have the right to know before the public does. (Our partners, for instance, may need to adjust their strategies in response to changes that we make along the way in our own. There's nothing so humiliating as not knowing some key point about a change, and having some reporter tell you that he just read all about it in a newsgroup.) We need to protect that orderly flow of information.

Re:We've always been out listening

Most of us have always been like me: when we comment, we acknowledge our association with MS,

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 ... 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.

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.

Passport?

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.

For some, it is too late...

In Sweden, some ATMs are already running NT.

And yes, they did *actually* get those "Low on Virtual Memory" errors (try to hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot on an ATM) and even a few bluescreens back then. I kid you not.

On the other hand after those child diseases, they are actully seeming to behave, and I know of noone that has actually lost (or gotten) money due to this.

The banks just needed two service packs, is my guess. :)

Well, so this product, after troubles unheard of in other systems, finally made it "stable" and "reliable".

I would not like to bet my money once again, just because I got the winning ticket once. Would you?

The return of Sircam?

How long until Sircam starts transfering money from one persons ATM machine to another?

I send you this financial transaction in order to have your advice.

Obligatory Joke

News.com notes that this will be used in slot machines and ATMs. Insert obligatory free-money joke.

Free money, or FEE money?

A Fee of $4.00 will be charged to this transaction for customer support, legal fees and continued lobbying to prevent Microsoft from being punished for monopolistic practices.

PRESS THIS BUTTON TO ACCEPT ---->

OR

PRESS THIS BUTTON TO ACCEPT ---->

Sorry, CANCEL has been disabled, please call 1-900-UGO-MSFT for customer support, first 30 minutes $75, mininum charge 30 minutes.

Linux fanatics starve...

...refuse to accept money fro Windows XP based ATMs...

The embedded devices market is not all about small and fast. And even where the issue is small and fast, the XP kernel may well prove to have more to offer than many UNIX designs.

There is a wide range of embedded devices, from washing machines to cars, to industrial process machinery. Until recently only a small fraction of those systems had anything as sophisticated as an operating system.

If on the other hand you want to build a next generation audio system you are likely to find that you need an O/S, you need some sort of file system to store your MP3s, you have an ethernet and possibly a WiFi interface to support, you may even support PCMCIA or compactflash. XP has major advantages in that space since you are guaranteed to have a driver available.

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. 512Mb SIMMs are on sale these days for the price of 16Mb SIMMs a couple of years back, nobody actually makes 20Gb 3.5" disks any more, they are too small to bother with.

RAM and disk space are not constrained resources on the PC, so don't expect companies in that space to constrain them in their products. The O/S kernel is kept small because the performance of the machine depends on large parts of it being in primary or secondary cache most of the time.

The features of XP that will be much more relevant to the embedded systems space are its multi-tasking and scheduling control. I don't expect any traditional UNIX kernel to do well there, the UNIX architecture was never designed for and is simply not up to RT tasks. Thats why the RT Linux varieties have major mods to the internals to support features such as guaranteed scheduling etc.

Re:Linux fanatics starve...

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.

Lies, damn lies!

The accusation of astroturfing is just untrue, those are lies and FUD spread by /.

In fact, embedded XP is the best thing since sliced bread and the Stinger platform will rarely crash your phone. The XBox kicks ass and Steve "Fester" Balmer is the nicest guy you can imagine.

In essence, it's really not true that Microsoft employees subvert discussion groups. I can prove it if you send mail to [e-mail].

WinXP for ATM

Welcome to WinXP for ATM
Please wait.
Enter your card.
New hardware found! Installing card-reader, please wait.
Please remove card from ATM.
Rebooting...
Welcome to WinXP for ATM
Please wait.
GPF, press "1, Clear + Enter" to reboot.
Rebooting...
Welcome to WinXP for ATM
Please wait.
Scandisk found errors on card-reader.
Enter your card.
Errors on your card have been found. Would you like to create a recovery-card?
"No."
It looks like you have never used this ATM before, would you like to transfer your profile?
"How do you know that?? No!"
You have selected withdraw cash.
Access Denied. Only a user with administrative rights may perform this action.
"F***.. Gimme back my card!"
Unable to remove card, there has been a sharing violation. This card is in use by another user.
"WTF????"

Windows XP Embedded - Inconceivable

You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

System requirements [microsoft.com]