WindowsForDevices.com has coverage of the Windows CE 6.0 launch.What makes the latest version of CE different is that there is complete availability of Windows CE's kernel source code for developers. Developers can now access shared source code for the Windows CE kernel -- as well as certain device drivers and application-level components -- directly from within the Windows Embedded CE 6.0 distribution package.

Fundamental enhancements to the Windows CE kernel are said to include:

• Multitasking enhancements -- CE 6.0 supports up to 32,000 processes with 2 GB of virtual memory per process, versus CE 5.0's maximum of 32 processes having a maximum of 32 MB virtual memory each
• Improved performance -- OS processes are moved to kernel space; GWES, device driver manager, and file system manager are in kernel space for improved performance
• Addition of kernel mode drivers -- CE 5.0 only supported user mode drivers; kernel mode drivers offer performance, user mode drivers provide stability; additionally, there can be multiple instances of the user mode driver manager
• Strict partitioning of user mode and kernel mode

As previously announced in conjunction with the preview release at MEDC in May, Windows CE's platform-level development tools have converted into plug-ins for Visual Studio 2005, resulting in a single tool that can be used for configuring, building, downloading, debugging, and testing the operating system, as well as for writing both native (Win32, MFC, ATL, WTL, STL) and managed (C#/VB) applications.

Basically, the Platform Builder toolset functionality from earlier versions of Windows CE had become a plug-in component for Visual Studio (VS), the popular Microsoft IDE (integrated development environment) that is used for Windows application development. This eliminates the need for developers to use two different toolsets during device development: Platform Builder for developing platform-level technologies like drivers and BSPs (board-support packages), and Visual Studio for developing application-level software.

Additionally, Microsoft's popular Visual Studio 2005 Professional IDE is now included, at no extra charge, in the $995 Windows Embedded CE 6.0 development package.