Book Review — Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Fundamentals
In recent years, Windows CE has been developing smoothly, flourishing on both the Windows CE OS and Windows Mobile fronts. Meanwhile, thanks to Microsoft’s product team’s tireless efforts, Windows CE as a general-purpose embedded operating system has become increasingly mature. However, in stark contrast, the American book publishing market has seen very few professional books on Windows CE development. I remember a book called “Building Powerful Platform using Windows CE” from years ago — it might have been many developers’入门 book. But its content is severely outdated, covering Windows CE 3.0, which is vastly different from the latest Windows CE 6. It was precisely due to this gap that I wrote a textbook based on Windows CE 5.0 in 2006. At that time, a US publisher even reached out, asking me to translate the book into English for publication. But I was worried my Chinglish would embarrass me, so I ultimately declined.
On my desk is an English book titled “Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Fundamentals,” newly published by Microsoft Press in 2008. Thanks to Microsoft China’s MVP team, I was able to get this book right after publication. This is the first professional English book I’ve seen in recent years on Windows CE system-level development — it fills a long-standing gap.
The authors are Dr. Stanislav Pavlov and Pavel Belevsky (sounds like Eastern European names). One is a Microsoft Embedded MVP, the other a Microsoft certified instructor. They’ve been in this industry for many years, and their understanding of embedded systems and Windows CE goes without saying.
This isn’t a hefty tome — the main text is only about 230 pages, a quick read. It has 10 chapters: Introduction, Development Tools, OS Architecture, Building the System, BSP, Driver Development, System Startup, Application Development, and Testing — basically covering everything a Windows CE low-level developer needs to know. It uses the latest Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 content. For Windows CE beginners, it provides a complete overview from tools to architecture to BSP — a great入门 resource.
The book’s best feature is its illustrations. The authors added大量 diagrams to explain obscure content (like memory models, layered drivers). You can tell they put significant effort into presenting complex system logic and function call logic in simple, vivid ways. In my opinion, a clear picture is worth pages of explanation.
Of course, no book is perfect. First, most content covers concepts and architecture at a relatively high level, with insufficient detail on finer points. You can barely find a single line of code in the entire book. This may be due to space constraints or the authors’ style, but readers hoping to copy and paste code may be disappointed. Second, the book doesn’t reference specific processors or Windows CE platforms — the content is通用 but makes it hard to grasp concrete implementation. In my view, introducing a concrete example and drawing analogies is far better than only covering general concepts at a high level.
All in all, for Windows CE beginners or developers wanting to understand higher-level architecture, this book is a rare教材 worth reading. I sincerely hope it will soon have a reprint or translation edition in China.
Other links:
MS Press book page
http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/12980.aspx