Windows CE and the Compact Framework are dead?
- by Valter Minute
This is one of the question that I’ve been asked more and more frequently at my public speeches and each time I meet customers.
The announcement of the new Windows Phone 7 platform and the release of Visual Studio 2010 generated a bit of confusion around Windows CE and some of the technologies it supports.
Windows CE is still alive and a lot of good programmers are working on the new releases (I had a chance to know some of them during the MVP summit in February).
Here’s a blog post from Olivier Bloch that describes the situation and provides some good news about the OS:
http://blogs.msdn.com/obloch/archive/2010/05/03/windows-ce-is-not-dead.aspx
As you can read here, Windows Phone 7 keeps its “roots” inside Windows CE.
Regarding the .NET Compact Framework, this article from the excellent “I know the answer (it’s 42)” blog from Abhinaba (it seems that we share a passion for photography, Douglas Adams and embedded development), explains that the .NET CF is the foundation of XNA and Silverlight implementation on the WP7 platform:
http://blogs.msdn.com/abhinaba/archive/2010/03/18/what-is-netcf.aspx
So Windows CE is here to stay, powering one of the most interesting smart phone platforms and ready to power also your devices.
Add those blogs to your RSS reader list and stay tuned for more good news about CE and the Compact Framework!
