Office apps (Word, Excel) for Windows CE?

One question from device makers using Windows CE comes up quite frequently: Are the popular Office Mobile apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) that can be found on every Windows Mobile device also available for Windows CE general embedded devices? And the answer is "no" - but read on.

What you can get today in Windows CE 5.0 in the "Professional Plus" license is a range of document viewers (incl. Word and Excel docs) - but they are not for editing. So if you need editing functionality, you have to shop for some suitable 3rd party solutions. One that is available for a range of platforms (incl. Windows CE) is SoftMaker's Office tools - especially TextMaker and PlanMaker, a word processor and spreadsheet app, resp., which you can get as Windows CE versions. Of course they aren't exactly cheap, but if you know a better alternative, let me know.