Re: Medical Devices?
There are a lot of such devices already running Windows XP Embedded!
The real reason Windows 8 Embedded is a WTF is because the companies making the devices it would go into are only just now starting to switch from WinXP Embedded to Win7 Embedded - for example, our first Win7 Embedded-based device shipped this year, our second will be next year.
We did that change for two reasons - firstly, and most importantly, Microsoft have effectively said they'll stop selling us WinXPe licences in a couple of years as our guaranteed support runs out. Secondly, Win7e gives us the multi-touch screen handling we wanted (because XP drivers are rare, see the first reason).
In the embedded market, changing the embedded OS used in existing products simply does not happen, and even changing the embedded OS used for new products is rare.
Very few new embedded products are "ground up", and swapping out the foundations is extremely risky so is only done if it's absolutely necessary, and always to something with a very long support life.
Moving to Win8 simply isn't going to happen for at least another five years - and if it involves significant changes to APIs then we'll simply move to Linux instead, as we already use that in our low-power devices.
Several of our competitors have already jumped all their high-end flagship products to Linux - although one of them went early and paid bitterly for it, the ones that waited until three/four years ago are doing quite well.