News from Embedded Systems West keynote.

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There were a number of interesting announcements made at the ESC West keynote yesterday – Kevin Dallas, general manager of the Windows Embedded Business presented the general session.

Here’s a list of the announcements.

MSDN Embedded Subscription

Windows Embedded joins the list of existing MSDN Subscriptions – the MSDN Embedded Subscription gives you access to all of the Windows Embedded development tools, Visual Studio, Desktop O/S, and Windows Embedded Server.

Here’s an image that shows you what you get… (Click to enlarge).

msdn_embedded

Subscription cost is $1,199 with renewal at $799.

Windows Embedded Server

Windows Embedded Server joins the line of embedded products, which includes Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE), Windows Embedded Standard (XP Embedded), Windows Embedded Enterprise (full desktop operating systems with embedded licensing), and Windows Embedded Server (Windows Server with Embedded licensing).

Here’s the current Windows Embedded product lineup – from client platforms, industry vertical solutions (Navigation and Point of Service), and Server.

WindowsEmbeddedProducts

Windows Embedded Developer Update

Windows embedded development tools (Target Designer, Platform Builder) ship with a number of components in the catalog, each embedded product can be updated by installing new components, BSPs, drivers, applications, or more – the problem today is finding all of the components you need to keep your development tools up to date.

Windows Embedded Developer Update (WEDU), will run as an agent application on your development PC (similar in some ways to Windows Update) and provide you access to product updates, QFEs, service packs, and trusted 3rd party content (BSPs, drivers).

Note that the Windows Embedded Developer Update agent will not automatically download and install components on your development machine, but will instead prompt you with the list of available updates – you get to decide what you want to download and install. This means that you can keep your development environment “clean” and you make the decision what and when to download/install components.

Note that Windows Embedded Developer Update is work in progress and isn’t actually available today – Windows Embedded Server and MSDN Embedded Subscription are available now.

- Mike