Inside Microsoft Windows CE (Microsoft Programming Series) [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by John Murray (Author) "If the Microsoft Windows CE development team committed its mission statement to paper, it might read like this: Windows CE is a new, portable, real-time,..." (more)
Key Phrases: embedded toolkit, interrupt service thread, internal heap, Microsoft Windows, Visual Basic, Internet Explorer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
In INSIDE MICROSOFT(r) WINDOWS(r) CE, author John Murray has brought together in a single volume the insights and strategies of the lay people involved in developing Windows CE. This book provides a clear exposition of the Windows CE modular architecture and fascinating details of the design choices that the operating systems developers made. The book explains the tremendous opportunities available to OEMs and software developers as new consumer electronics platforms for Windows CE move to market. The original Handheld PC platform has been joined by the Palm PC and Auto PC platforms, and on the horizon are Web TVs, Web phones, and DVD and multimedia devices.

INSIDE MICROSOFT(r) WINDOWS(r) CE offers conceptual frameworks that help developers understand their design options and efficiently optimize memory. New support for COM and ActiveX(r) is fueling development of Microsoft and third-party software components. With these design innovations, it is possible to conceive hardware running Windows CE that is dedicated and optimized to run any current and future Microsoft(r) software.

INSIDE MICROSOFT(r) WINDOWS(r) CE concludes with a series of real-world case studies of new platforms based on Windows CE to demonstrate its wide-ranging flexibility. This will be a vital and popular book for developers working with Windows CE.

Product Details

• Paperback: 225 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; illustrated edition edition (October 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572318546
• ISBN-13: 978-1572318540
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #821,391 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good historical content, poor technical content, November 18, 1998

By A Customer

I was very disappointed in this book. I was looking for a real technical book on Windows CE, and I was mistaken to believe that "Inside Windows CE", meant the details of the OS itself. I wanted to know the exact process of porting Windows CE to a new hardware platform as well as a good explanation of porting applications.

This book is NOT that. This book documents the effort involved in creating Windows CE, and why choices were made over others. It does talk about some details of the OS, but brushes over them.

In summary, this is a good book to teach you who wrote what part of Windows CE, and how it was done, and why things were done the way they were. This is NOT the book to order to learn how to program in Windows CE or find out the details of porting Windows CE to a new hardware platform or any of these technical details.

As of the time of this writing I haven't seen a book that details the build process. The only option at this point is to purchase the Microsoft Platform Builder for Windows CE 2.11.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't expect too much from this book, August 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Inside Microsoft Windows CE (Paperback)

I always buy the books on Amazon.com, because the review's are very helpfull. I only buy the book after reviewing it. But this time the reviews mislead me. If you had bought "Inside" books from Microsoft Press for example, Inside ODBC, Inside COM, Inside OLE don't even compare these books with Inside Microsoft Windows CE. Those books are GEMS, TOP OF THE LINE. This book is like a story book. Lack of indepth technical stuff.These days I am starting to learn PDA stuff. I expected this book to be some thing like Palm OS Companion guide which explains every thing about the OS. Even after paying for the book (Palm OS Companion is free) I am not satisfied. I did not get my money's worth. Bottom line is don't buy this book if you are interested in the Insides of Windows CE OS (as this book suggets).

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Worst of both worlds., August 15, 2002

By	SoftwareRancher "software_rancher" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This book is unlike any other O/S book I've ever encountered; if I'm lucky I'll never meet another one like! Imagine an unholy blending of a typical O/S reference and "Ghost in the Machine" (the story of the development team for a Data General computer) and you'll have a feel for this book; it does justice to neither genre. Members of the design team describe various features of the O/S in their own words along with trivia about MS politics and lots of patting themselves on the back:"this is a cool thing we did". This approach produces a cluttered and not entirely coherent book. If you're expecting something like "Inside WindowsNT" you'll be sorely disappointed.