Microsoft: 'Prepare for 15 billion more clients'

If you're an IT professional, Microsoft made an announcement last week that may increase both your capital expenditures budget and your job security. At the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in San José, California, Microsoft announced that the latest version of its OS for embedded systems, Windows Embedded Standard 7, had …

[Goat Jam]

Bad analogy alert

Try this

You buy a Ford which is widely know for it's flawed security and thefts are common and widespread. To alleviate this you buy an Acme Alarm(tm) in attempt to keep the thieves at bay.

Unfortunately, the Acme alarm is also a piece of crap and eventually it fails spectacularly causing you to be locked out of your vehicle completely.

Who is to blame;

A) Ford, for making a vehicle with such poor security fundamentals.

B) Acme, for making a low quality security product

C) You, for buying a car with known security flaws

D) all of the above.

[Pascal Monett]

Meanwhile

In MS-land, we learn that people have 10 PCs for every TV in the house.

Now I don't know about you, but in my house there are 2 TVs and 2 PCs and I'm a gamer and something of a tech freak.

In a normal household, there is the TV, period. In many households, there is probably a TV and a console, maybe 2 TVs and a console. In houses where the occupants are a bit more tech-savvy, there might be 2 TVs, a console or three, and a PC or two.

But for the life of me, the only house where I can imagine that there are 10 times more PCs than TVs is the house of that madman with 40 WoW accounts.

So, "PCs [...] in the hundreds of millions" and "TVs [...] in the tens of millions" strikes me as quite an unrealistic view of the household situation.

Let us take an extreme example : Belgium. That country has a 99% TV penetration, which means that practically every single household has at least one TV.

Who is going to say that every one of them also has a PC ? Not going to happen.

But hey, this is MS-land, where anything good for MS can happen. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid, Mr. Dallas.

[jake]

@Pascal Monett

In this house, there are zero TVs, and about four dozen PCs (if you include the now aging iMacs, and my legacy DOS machines). About fifteen of them have been running for months, and the rest boot as needed.

Only one runs Windows, and that's my over ten year old Win2K box that my wife spared (she wants to see how long the old girl can keep going, out of nostalgia ... the box is airgapped). Oh, and my Wife's laptop can boot into WinXP and a couple other odds & ends if needed, but she can't remember the last time she booted into anything but Slackware.

We are not gamers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flashback

Does anyone remember those massively forwarded emails from 6 or 7 years ago which showed ATMs with the blue screen of death, screens in airports with the BSoD, ticket collection points with (you guessed it) the BSoD - in fact, there were screenshots of just about every system that could be computer controlled, all showing the BSoD.

Will anything have changed? Probably not. Difficulty is that it might be harder to upgrade software when it comes on a chip...

[Daemon ZOGG]

""Raises?" you may ask. Sorry, but Windows Embedded Standard 7 can only do so much."

Raises? NOT! ..Must have been the cost of all of those additional micr0$oft software licenses. }:P ..Embedded systems? Linux does it better, faster, AND with a smaller footprint. ;)

[amanfromMars 1]

Nutty as a fruit cake ...... Give them Cake and Cakes ... for a Dessert of Dreams*

You may like to consider that embed facility for MetaDataBase Source Capture is considerably more Focussed and Developed for Virtual Application at the bit stage of Quantum Core Communicating Builds for Vital Virtual TeleTransPortation Source Code XSSXXXXChanges, and thus may the Operating System and Browser Engines for Placement and Search be Remotely Controlled at the Macro Micro Qubit Processor Level. Now that would be a Startingly SMART Discovery for Delivery and ZerodDay Trading to Real Naturally Smart Natives in LOVE with Peace and a Piece of Red Hot XXXX Action. For Top Shelf Bottom Drawer Traders and Business Analysts into Chaotic Rumblings and Ramblings in Great Game Holes/Periods of Desperate Doubtful Deliberation with Resultant Seriously Impaired Reasoning .

Blighty on a Bender Playing a Blinder is a Noble Recursive Eventuality. :-)

Thanks for the AIBeta Field Test Facility, El Regers.

* Heavenly Sticky Sweet Creations

[jake]

@amfM

"Thanks for the AIBeta Field Test Facility, El Regers."

::heh::

My only question is, will there be an ElReg write-up on the project?

Ink wiring winos wanna node ...

[Gert Selkobi]

So does that mean.....

.....that in the future my washing machine will suffer the dreaded blue rinse of death and/or be susceptible to blocked overflow attacks?

Got me coat...

[Spanners]

Think back

10/15/20 years ago, IT staff almost everywhere would have been saying something on the lines of "Please keep away from Windows networking!"

I remember saying something like this in a job interview a dozen years ago. I did get the job but then all over the world, PHBs compelled us all to downgrade to Windows on everything. Linux and other things are helping to back us away from this but we have a long way to go.

Windows has not become near-universal because of its superiority, reliability, price or anything else. It got to where it is by a fantastic marketing machine that convinces the ignorant that it is the only way. If we are not careful, we could start heading down this road again.

[simon barfield]

out of touch with reality

heh.. quality.. like we can get 2 gig of ram on an embedded device.. look redmond.. we don't use os'es half the time we use state machines.. in the event of needing an rtos we usually write our own.. fancy that!

[RanTalbott]

It's deja vu all over again.

sed "s/Windows CE/Windows 7/g" <ms_hype_1999.txt >ms_hype_2010.txt

[John Smith 19]

Greetings

Call me Arkady.

I am sending you message from somewhere in former Soviet Union to thank all those managers who made their developers switch to Windows Embedded. They told you it would be rubbish and compromised within a week of roll out but you did not believe them.

I fell to knees and thanked God when I heard of this.

Before I ran 5th biggest botnet on planet. Now I am number 1.

My team of hackers could not have done it without you.

BTW All your appliances belong to me.

[YumDogfood]

Sidelining the PC for control freakery and profit

Using the internet via a PC is getting old for some people, and smartphones (to be followed by TVs) are the driver for this with the FaceBook App as a prime example. It might be a return to the days of the proprietary app - which may hold some appeal to the service providers (imagine no AdBlock).

Imagine the internet as a distribution medium, but with companies having total control over the presentation. No wonder MS have seen the light and are moving in this direction. As far as truly embedded systems and SoCs, these are mostly ARM, MIPS for such stuff as Setop Boxes running a full OS (Linux mostly - its everywhere) and PIC, AVR for itty-bitty things running uCOS or nothing.

Without a cross-platform (cross compile) solution (sorry about that word) MS are limited in their penetration, unlike Paris users of course.

[amanfromMars 1]

IT is a Much Better and More Advanced than you have Realised or Imagined.*

"Using the internet via a PC is getting old for some people, and smartphones (to be followed by TVs) are the driver for this with the FaceBook App as a prime example. It might be a return to the days of the proprietary app - which may hold some appeal to the service providers (imagine no AdBlock)." ...... YumDogfood Posted Tuesday 4th May 2010 00:01 GMT

YumDogfood,

You have completely not touched upon a Present Actuality and the Running of the Internet via a PC or if you prefer, InterNetworking PCs Control of the Internet and with Powerful Intellectual Property Energy Supply to Drivers and Virtual Machinery in ITs Live Operational Virtual Environments too.

* There are though a Few who have Realised IT and would Aspire to Conspire to Inspire with Desire All Satisfying Services ......... For the Absolute Advantage Afforded a Monopolising Singularity with Special Intelligence Supplies.

[John Smith 19]

Announcing Windows Embedded (Medical Edition)

AKA Windows for stiffs?