MS PDC, Oct. 14, 1998, Wednesday

MS PDC, Wednesday, Day 3, October 14, 1998, Denver Colorado PDC Bookends

An installed AutoPC	Penn Gillette of Penn & Teller entertains the PDC crowd

Todd's Notes: VP Tod Nielson said the the new MSDN Start web page will be available in January 1999. It will provide a simplified and customizable entry point for developers. The site will take advantage of IE5 and XML. Most importantly, all developer information will be collected at this site.

Session: Building DNA Applications The Easy Way With ADO And the Windows CE Toolkit for Visual BASIC by Chris Stirrat/Program Manager, Matt Woodward/Lead Developer, Consumer Platform Division, Microsoft Corporation.
Points in no particular order

The new CE Toolkit for Visual BASIC 6 will support H/PC, H/PC Pro and Formless Applications (embedded systems).
There are plans for supporting Windows 95/98 without emulation. Remote debugging will work under 95/98.
The Visual BASIC CE Runtime file will be about 650KB.
Runtimes will be available for Windows CE 2.0 H/PCs and Windows CE 2.1 H/PC Pro Edition.
All CPUs will be supported.
Some OEMs will include the VB Runtime in ROM.
The team hopes to release the next VB CE Toolkit within 60 days of the the release Visual BASIC 7.0 for Windows 98/NT.
The ActiveX toolkit is available at Microsoft.Com as a free download.
You need Windows CE Toolkit for Visual C++ to create your own AciveX controls.
Data access using ADOCE for Windows CE deserves its own section of discussion. I will work on that after the conference.

Session: Windows CE Networking and Communications Architecture by Alex T. Choe, Developer Support Engineer, Microsoft.

Not all RS-232 control lines are implemented on all platforms. The implemented lines depends on the OEM's design decision. Translation: Not all serial ports are equal.
Current Windows CE devices use a subset of TAPI 1.4 for modem line control. (Note: TAPI 3.0 is what will be released with NT 5). There is an indication that inbound call control may be added in Windows CE 3.0.
Implementation of Fast IR (IrDA 1.1 up to 4Mbps) is at the design discretion of the OEM.
Use of the Redirector requires the use of one the NT units licensed connections.

Note: One vendor allowed me to take a photo of their unannounced H/PC Pro. The requested that I not publish the photo or mention its name. I will honor that request and post the photo as soon as permission is granted to me.


LG H/PC Pro (uses CE 2.0 not CE 2.11), available now	NEC H/PC Pro

Sharp H/PC Pro, available November	Vadem Clio (also sold as the Sharp Tripod)