Microsoft Releases Embedded Version of Windows 8 for CTP -- Visual Studio Magazine

Microsoft Releases Embedded Version of Windows 8 for CTP

The embedded version is specially designed to support handheld devices for industrial use, electronic signs and kiosks, among other mobile device uses.

By Kurt Mackie
03/07/2012

The embedded version of Windows 8, complete with a customization option for developers, is now available as a pre-beta download.

In addition to a focus on mobile devices, the community test preview (CTP) release of Windows Embedded Standard 8 has new features for security and administration.

The new CTP release is based on Windows 8, Microsoft's nascent operating system that was released last week as a beta. The embedded version is specially designed to support handheld devices for industrial use, electronic signs and kiosks, among other mobile device uses. Microsoft describes the embedded OS as a "componentized" version of Windows 8 that can be customized by Microsoft's independent software vendor and device manufacturer partners. With this release, developers can now use a new "module designer" to customize modules within Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP.

The embedded OS uses the Metro-style apps capability and touch user interface afforded by Windows 8. It also gets security and management capabilities inherited from the Windows 8 code base.

For instance, Windows Embedded Standard 8 can take advantage of a "secure boot" feature, based on the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard, that will check for malware in the boot path before starting the OS, which is a feature of Windows 8 for such UEFI devices. Additionally, the Windows Embedded Standard 8 CTP provides options to use BitLocker encryption for devices. The release also supports AppLocker, which will block the use untrusted apps through white listing. IT pros can further restrict the device using a new "unified configuration tool" that's available for Windows Embedded Standard 8.

Various Microsoft IT pro management capabilities are enabled, such as Active Directory and Group Policy. An Embedded Device Manager will work with Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager to accomplish tasks such as deploying the OS and applications, as well as applying updates and security patches. System Center Operations Manager can be used for device monitoring too, according to Microsoft's product description (PDF).

Devices using the embedded OS can connect to Microsoft's public cloud services, such as Windows Azure Storage or SQL Azure Database. Other Windows 8 capabilities in the embedded version are improved power management, synchronization and wireless support (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi). Windows Embedded Standard 8 also supports near-field communications for applications such as vending machine payment interactions.

Microsoft lately has been describing its client OS vision as being about devices and services. On the embedded side, Microsoft sees a growing world of "intelligent systems," where devices act to funnel data back to organizations for decision-making purposes. According to a press release, Microsoft moved its Windows Embedded segment to its Management and Security Division of the Microsoft Server and Tools Business in September of 2010 to better align its embedded operations with this intelligent systems vision.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

Hands On: New VS Code Insiders Build Creates Web Page from Image in Seconds

New Vision support with GitHub Copilot in the latest Visual Studio Code Insiders build takes a user-supplied mockup image and creates a web page from it in seconds, handling all the HTML and CSS.
Naive Bayes Regression Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the naive Bayes regression technique, where the goal is to predict a single numeric value. Compared to other machine learning regression techniques, naive Bayes regression is usually less accurate, but is simple, easy to implement and customize, works on both large and small datasets, is highly interpretable, and doesn't require tuning any hyperparameters.
VS Code Copilot Previews New GPT-4o AI Code Completion Model

The 4o upgrade includes additional training on more than 275,000 high-quality public repositories in over 30 popular programming languages, said Microsoft-owned GitHub, which created the original "AI pair programmer" years ago.
Microsoft's Rust Embrace Continues with Azure SDK Beta

"Rust's strong type system and ownership model help prevent common programming errors such as null pointer dereferencing and buffer overflows, leading to more secure and stable code."
Xcode IDE from Microsoft Archrival Apple Gets Copilot AI

Just after expanding the reach of its Copilot AI coding assistant to the open-source Eclipse IDE, Microsoft showcased how it's going even further, providing details about a preview version for the Xcode IDE from archrival Apple.