Customer Reviews

The Windows CE Technology Tutorial: Windows Powered Solutions for the Developer

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I highly recommend this book as an excellent collection of applet samples of core features needed to develop for the Pocket PC and other Windows CE devices. The ADOCE chapter is very well done and I think that chapter is worth the price of the book alone.

This book has been the first book I've found that is useful for Pocket PC development. The author maintains a web site to make any necessary changes in the text or samples, keeping the information extremely up-to-date.

It was nice to get this book, compile the samples, and see things work first hand. (In contrast, I have been frustrated at books by Microsoft Press that are highly theoretical where the information doesn't make sense until you've already figured it out somewhere else and re-read the chapter. Ex: The Windows CE Programmer's Guide.) Although, I plan to get the Microsoft Press books for reference.

This book is not a beginner's getting-started book, but is a good book for someone who already has a little experience with Visual Basic or Visual C++. It seems to be targted toward the intermediate and advanced programmer.

This book provides much information on the differences between various versions of WinCE(1.0,2.0,2.11,2.12,3.0), WinCE hardware platforms(at least 4), and the various WinCE development tools (embedded visual toolkit 3.0,Embedded VB and VC addons for VS 6). The book documents desktop-WinCE interactions and dependencies and also programming 'gotchas' stemming from all these differences that programmers will save much time and aggravation by avoiding. This is critical information for programmers developing WinCE applications.

This book advertises that it contains information about embedded Visual Basic. Like, only 1% of the book is about eVB. All the examples and code is for embedded C++, which is fine if that's what you are looking for. The author even acknowledges in the text of the book that discussion about eVB will not be covered, so why does the book say that it talks about eVB? I bought this book and wasted my money. Buyer Beware.

I bought this book because I expected to find detail on the latest Embedded Tools and Pocket PC platform. It doesnot have in my opinion a "Full coverage of Pocket PC".

Meunch does focus on many essential topics and I liked the frameworks he used to build the sample application - splitting the UI into one ATL component, and utilities like database access using ADO into another ATL component. If your looking for an example of a complete data oriented application including synchronisation with a compatible desktop app then get this book however if you like me were looking for Pocket PC and the new Embedded Tools then this book is not really up to date.

All important technologies are covered along with good samples. This book even explains exactly how to recreate those samples from scratch instead of just throwing them at you. Very cool, and very easy to understand. I especially found the thread application in the book pretty neat. It shows how to create complete applications from the first bit through installation. I recommend this book to anybody who wants to write applications for Windows CE, especially Pocket PC which is covered completely. Not surprising since the author also writes for PocketPC.com.

This book is a poor choice if you want to learn to program in the Pocket PC environment. The back cover calls this a "practical guide" but the book spends most of the first six chapters describing how Windows CE programming evolved from Windows programming. You must be fluent in Windows application development in C++ for this book to be useful. The examples are poor and do not work with the Visual Tools software available at the Microsoft site.

This book is a very good reference book for me, an experienced developer who has no Windows CE background and didn't work on Windows platform for the last few years. The Chapter 9 Remote and Connectivity was the chapter I found the most useful part. I could set up my Compaq iPAQ to communicate with my desktop painlessly using the sample codes.

I wish one reviewer would have stated the obvious:This book is written for C++ developers (the author states this on page 92). If you are trying to write a program using anything like Visual Basic this book might as well have been written in Japanese. The main example developed throughout the book is in C++. 99% of the book is C++. VB is only mentioned as an afterthought and developing using VB as a primary platform is not explained AT ALL! It looks like it could be a good book for C++ developers but I wouldn't know since I am not one. If you want to learn to develop programs for handheld devices using VB forget this book or learn C++ before you buy it.

There are some useful information in this book, however, this book does not go into great details on each particular subject. The section on writing an activesync provider, as an example, is really scant. The book merely points out what code to change in a cookbook method without ever explaining why its doing it, or explaining the whole architecture clearly for that matter. IF you've ever read LINUX HOWTO materials, you'll know what I mean. It shows you what to do, but it doesn't explain to you why you're doing it.

The most useful chapter is the last chapter (11 - Miscellaneous topics). As for the rest of the chapters, you can live by reading the online manuals.

I mainly bought this book for the networking chapter. The winsock code was very helpful and easy to understand.