Windows XP Embedded Standard 2009 CTP#1 & CTP#2

(or Micro$oft decided to let the marketing hacks screw with XPE.)

What really cranks the whole thing was that after going to MEDC last year, after being told by the XPE MS people and believing(!) them that Windows XP Embedded was finally going to get IE7 in component form, the MS marketing nimrods got into the mix and decided to change the name of the product AND take the previously promised but canceled FP2008 and turn it into Windows XP Embedded Standard 2009. With a name that sounds mostly like a meaningless jumble of BS, it looks like its going to be marketed as a new product, not the upgrade it should be. I feel like the product is being needlessly churned with marketing ju-ju just to see if they can extract more $1000/year subscriptions from the business market. All without having to continue to allow Windows XP Pro to be sold instead of Wista.

They added Silverlight, yipee. So what. Another proprietary web browser plugin that requires lots of CPU horsepower.

Its pretty obvious that the only people they will get to test XPE 2009 before release are the same ones that already use the current Windows XP Embedded product. Documentation on installation and troubleshooting are 3 or 4 paragraphs at best, usually not more than 2 or 3 sentences.

The only feature that looks promising is that they have FINALLY integrated it into Visual Studio. We'll see exactly how they've managed that. VS2008 has the right hooks to make it work, so that's pretty obvious. The question is, how much of VS2008 do you have to buy to make it work well? VS2005 had to be at the Professional level at least to get Win CE and WIn Mobile "built-ins" to work.

Evidently they've included the new Peer-to-Peer Vista protocol into the XPE2009 system so that XPE systems can connect to Vista boxes. A dubious feature at least in our environment since our Windows based software applications won't run on Vista. We've already tested that out.

One other item is a 10 year product support life-cycle. Knowing what that means to other Windows products, I expect maybe another couple of years before they decide to ashcan this product. XPE is already 6 years old and you probably won't get any new component support for it past January this coming year.

Yeah I believe Microsoft really means 10 years this time, yeah buddy. Let me know when you come around with the KoolAid OK?

Details once I decide how I'm going to test it out without trashing my current XPE installation.

“20% Brighter Colors!” “New Fresh Lemony Scent!” Emphasis on the lemon.