CLI will be releasing the following images as a standard on the accompanying platforms:

• ST5500x / ST6500x - Windows Embedded Standard
• IA1900x / IA1060x - Windows Embedded Standard
• MT3500x / MT1500x - Windows XP SP2
• ST5500h / ST6500h - Windows CE 6 (M.E6601.3)
• MT3500h / MT1500h - Windows CE 5

Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2,  and Windows XP Embedded Service 3 are still available and can be requested on any platform.  Windows CE 6 will be the standard moving forward,  although on the MT models (3500/1500) CLI can still accommodate Windows CE 5 requests.

Windows Embedded Standard features at a glance (from Microsoft):

• Reduced Footprint - 12,000 Individual Components
• Full Win 32 Application Compatibility
• 10 - year product support life cycle that started in 2H’ CY2008 (Windows XP embedded started in CY2002)
• Microsoft Silverlight
• .NET Framework 3.5
• Support for Windows Server 2008 (RDP 6.1)
• Windows Media Player 11
• Internet Explorer 7 & 8
• Windows Server Update Services
• System Center Configuration Manager Support
• Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

More on the Windows Embedded Standard Advantages:

Windows Embedded Standard 2009 delivers the power, familiarity, and reliability of the Windows operating system in componentized form, helping device makers to easily create smart, connected devices requiring rich applications, services, and end-user experiences. Windows Embedded Standard features technologies that easily connect with many common industry standards plus several Microsoft desktop and server technologies, leading to lower costs in application development, operating system deployment, servicing, and maintenance.

Connectivity
Windows Embedded Standard includes security and management technologies to help embedded devices connect seamlessly to Windows Vista and take advantage of the new features in Windows Server 2008. Support for Windows Server Update Services and System Center Configuration Manager helps ensure that Windows Embedded Standard supports enterprise-class manageability of both operating system and application-level updates. Standard helps device makers build sophisticated devices with visually compelling user experiences. Windows Embedded Standard delivers features that enable next-generation media experiences, rich interactive applications, and compelling user interfaces, helping device makers bring innovative devices to market more quickly, while offering unparalleled connected experiences.

Confidence
WES protects the investment made by OEMs, partners, and enterprises by maintaining backward compatibility with previous versions (Windows XP Embedded), helping to accelerate time to market while minimizing the cost typically experienced during platform migration.

Windows Embedded Standard delivers the power, familiarity, and reliability of Windows, a rich set of componentized embedded operating system technologies, and specific embedded enabling features that allow you to tailor the OS to your device. With Standard, you can optimize the size of the OS footprint on your device because you can select only the drivers, services, and applications you need. By using only the components you need, you can reduce development time, optimize operating system size, while lowering hardware costs.

Community and Support
Standard includes componentized drivers for Intel, AMD, and VIA’s most recently released x86 chipset, providing device makers with the flexibility to easily migrate and benefit from the performance improvements of the latest processor generation.

Windows Embedded Compact Edition 6.0 features at a glance (CE6; from Microsoft):

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 features a completely redesigned hybrid kernel, which supports over 32,768 processes, up from 32 process support of the previous versions.  Windows Embedded CE 6.0 is also the basis of Windows Mobile 7.  Below are some of the key enhancements of Windows CE6. 

• Some System components (such as filesystem, gwes, device driver manager) have been moved to the kernel space.
• The system components which now run in kernel have been converted from EXEs to DLLs, which get loaded into kernel space.
• New Virtual Memory Model. The lower 2GB is the process VM space and is private per process. The upper 2GB is the kernel VM space.
• New Device Driver Model that supports both User Mode and Kernel Mode Drivers.
• The 32 process limit has been raised to 32,768 processes.
• The 32 megabyte virtual memory limit has been raised to the total virtual memory (Up to 2GB of private VM is available per process).
• Read-only support for UDF 2.5 filesystem.
• 802.11i (WPA2) and 802.11e (QoS) wireless standards, and multiple radio support.
• CE 6.0 works with x86, ARM, SH4 and MIPS based processor architectures.

More on the Windows Embedded Standard Advantages:

New Device Drivers

The tour of the new features in R2 starts with a discussion of a set of new and improved device drivers. First on the list is the ATAPI hard disk driver which has been updated to provide support for serial ATA (SATA) controllers. This will help OEMs using the newer x86 motherboards that have an SATA controller instead of the older parallel ATA (PATA) controllers.

For more portable systems, the flash driver and Secure Digital controller drivers have also been improved. The new flash driver supports multi-layer cell support, where each flash cell stores more than one bit per cell. The flash driver has also be redesigned to change it from the old “Flash Abstraction Layer” / “Flash Media Driver” architecture that was unique to flash drivers to a more conventional Model Device Driver / Physical Device Driver layer driver design used by the other drivers in Windows Embedded CE.

The secure digital controller driver has been updated to support hardware that implements the SD 2.0 specification. Secure Digital 2.0 provides better performance in both 1 and 4 bit modes. In addition to faster speeds for SDIO Cards, SD 2.0 also supports high capacity memory cards up to 32 gigabytes up from the SD 1.1 limit of 4 GB.

A new USB smartcard reader driver has been added in R2. While Windows Embedded CE has supported a specific smart card reader previously, the driver works with USB card readers that support the USB Chip/Smart Card Interface Devices Specification. A number of smart card readers support this specification so this allows OEMs choices on card readers that previously didn’t exist.

Windows Embedded CE has always supported raster (bitmap) and TrueType fonts. Starting with R2, the code that reads, interprets, and draws the fonts has been partitioned into a replaceable DLL. This “Pluggable Font” technology allows third parties to provide their own font drawing engines that can extend or replace the current font drawing code in Windows Embedded CE. A side effect of Pluggable Fonts is that Windows Embedded CE can now support both raster and TrueType fonts in the same image.

Terminal Services Client improvements

The terminal server client software in Windows Embedded CE has been upgraded for R2. The big news here is that the remote desktop protocol (RDP) used by the TS client has been upgraded from RDP 5.2 to RDP 6.0. This effort brings the Windows Embedded CE RDP stack in line with the stack used in Windows Vista. RDP 6.0 provides a better base architecture from which an improved terminal services client can be built.

All of these features have been ported to the new terminal services client. In addition to the existing features, the move to RDP 6.0 has enabled a new set of features that are now available on the Windows Embedded CE client. The first of these is the support for 32 bits per pixel displays. Previous versions of RDP only supported pixel depths of up to 24 bits per pixel.

RDP 6.0 also provides support for spanning a remote desktop session across multiple local displays. This enables thin client systems with multiple displays to support desktop of resolutions up to 4096 by 2048. The one limitation of this support is that the displays on the thin client device must be the same resolution.  In addition to multiple display support, RDP 6.0 also enables custom display resolutions so the client is free to specify its own resolutions including wide screen resolutions where the width to height ratio is 16:9.

RDP 6.0 brings more than just an improvement in video support. There is also significant improvement in security for the client server link. RDP 6.0 supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols. These protocols encrypt the data sent through the RDP channel, decreasing the chance of eavesdropping and data tampering.

The Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 terminal services client also supports Network Level Authentication. Using NLA, a client is authenticated by the server or domain controller before a full remote desktop session is established. In previous versions of RDP, the session was first established, and then the credentials of the user were verified.

In addition to NLA, RDP 6.0 enables Server Authentication. Server authentication enables the terminal server client software to verify the identity of the server as the connection is established. The verification is accomplished using an exchange of certificates by the server to the client. Server Authentication is supported by Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 6.0 for Windows Embedded CE has also been significantly improved for CE 6.0 R2. While still a port of the Internet Explorer 6.0 product (not IE 7.0) IE has been updated to provide better security, better performance, and improvements to better manage kiosk scenarios.

The IE team at Microsoft has taken some of the algorithms used to increase the performance of IE 7 and back ported them to IE 6.0 for Windows Embedded CE. These performance tweaks provide a noticeable improvement in page rendering for text centric pages using Western European languages. While performance values will vary from machine to machine, the improvement in page rendering should be quite noticeable in many situations.

The improved Internet Explorer now also supports rich text editing. Support for RTE fields allows changing of the font, color, and other aspects of the text within the rich edit control. RTE support allows rendering of websites such as Hotmail that use rich text editor fields to be rendered correctly on Windows Embedded CE systems.

For CE 6.0 R2, IE has been updated to better support kiosk situations. The new version of IE now supports better user history, temporary file, and cookie management compared to earlier versions. Now, users can delete cookies through the Internet Options dialog as well as configure IE to automatically delete any cookies when the browsing session ends.

Internet Explorer for Windows Embedded CE now supports using proxy auto-config files. A proxy auto-config file tells the browser how to choose the appropriate proxy server given the URL being accessed. The files, with a .PAC extension, and written in JavaScript is invoked when IE is about to fetch a page. Desktop browsers, both IE and others have supported .PAC files for years. Now, with CE 6.0 R2, Internet Explorer for Windows Embedded CE also supports .PAC files.

Accompanying the updated Internet Explorer in the new release is a new version of the Windows Media Player® ActiveX (OCX) control. This updated media player is not a minor tweak but a major update. It is the media player control used in Media Player 11 ported to Windows Embedded CE.

The new media player control is a vast improvement over the older 6.4 media player control that was provided in the original release of Windows Embedded CE 6.0. The older control exposed a simple interface that allowed applications to perform standard actions such as play, rewind, fast forward, pause, and stop. There are other methods and properties for the control, but compared to the newer 7.0 OCX, the old interface is rather simple.

 Feedback from one of our very valued customers is that Active Directory domain login times have been seen to be significantly reduced by introducing MS Internet Explorer 8 in place of IE7.   With Internet Explorer 8 it has been witnessed that the domain login times can drop dramatically.  Per Microsoft, they will not send out hotfixes for IE7 (which makes sense).  A customer of ours had Microsoft for 2 days on the phone helping to troubleshoot domai logon latency at the bootup.Below was what was found by the customer from the Microsoft Engineers:

Issue: Slow logins on desktop PC / Citrix and Servers - 2.5+ min logins

Root Cause:  Group policies with IE 7 causes slow logins.  Microsoft Hotfix KB941158 does not work

Resolution / Workaround:

1. Install IE 8 as it has been resolved in that version. It is said there is no plan in place for a fix for IE7.

Recommendation:  Deploy Internet Explorer 8 per Microsoft’s recommendation.  This will require an update to all Citrix servers and a reboot,  as well as the obvious update to the desktop.

Result:  The difference has been witnessed by the custom to change the login time from 2.5 minutes,   to a 10 - 15 second login per device when a profile is already in place.  This is a significant savings which makes for a much better user experience.  (The different on a new login is just as drastic.  New logins were clocked by the customer to be 3-5 minutes,  where as with the update it is reduced to 60 seconds per device.)

Testing Environment:  This tests was run on 2 Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 servers with 2 Windows XP Workstations.

(This was tested on 2 Citrix Presentation Servers 4.5 with 2 Windows XP device)

Please Note - Microsoft contributed another proposed resolution that was NOT RECOMMENDED.  See below for details:

• 1. Replace a DLL on every PC with an old one from Windows XP Service Pack 2 (does not apply to Servers)
• 2. Turn off group policy for anything Internet Explorer (means you have to deploy the proxy client to all machines)

** Replacing older DLL’s can introduce compatibility issues with IE7 and/or IE8

CLI will not yet be introducing Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 as a standard.  The following is an article from Michael Horowitz outlining some of concerns about deploying IE8 in the Enterprise.  CLI is happy to work with customers that decide to introduce any supported Internet Browser,  but as a standard will not yet be making the migration to incorporate Internet Explorer 8 on any standard shipping image.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_you_should_not_install_internet_explorer_8

**  A special thanks for Brian and Paul for this information!!

 Computer Lab International (CLI), the thin client customization specialists, has announced the release of the IA1060 10″ mobile thin client netbook. The IA1060 will consist of a 10″ thin client netbook form factor, differentiating itself from the average 12″ and 15″ options, and giving a whole new degree of mobility for the user. The IA1060 processor will also be the thin client market’s first mobile Intel Atom offering, which continues to exhibit the innovation which has come to represent CLI.

The 10″ Nomad will be based off of an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, and includes Intel’s GMA 950 onboard graphics. This will enable users to achieve top notch local processing performance, if required, combined with fantastic graphics performance. At less than three pounds in weight, and with a 10″ screen the IA1060 gives a whole new meaning to mobility in the thin client market.

“The IA1060 comes to represent the future of thin clients,” says Thomas Fei, President of Computer Lab International. “The industry has seen a rapid rise in the mobile computing market, and we will continue to evolve our product line to respond to the requests of our customers. The timing is ideal to take advantage of two dynamic markets; mobile computing and virtualization.”

Combined with virtualization solutions like Citrix® XenApp^TM, the Nomad gives a whole new user experience to those looking to combine performance and mobility with efficiency. Customers can now take advantage of the latest in virtualization innovations, while planning long term on a platform that will exceed expectations in the near and distant future. In addition to the Intel Atom 1.6 GMA950 chipset and the 6 cell battery, the IA1060 comes standard supporting 802.11b/g/n wireless options as well as a 1.3MP Webcam and support for Bluetooth.

Computer Lab International (CLI), the thin client customization specialists, has announced the release of the IA1900 18.5″ all-in-one thin client. The ‘Razor’ includes an 18.5″ widescreen LCD form factor, redefining the phrase ‘zero footprint.’ The IA1900 platform will be based off of the Intel Atom N270 platform, and will provide a revolutionary solution for point of sale and digital signage solutions.

The IA1900 is an ultra thin, integrated solution that combines the logic of a thin client with the form factor of an LCD. The depth of the client is only 35mm, while providing a full 16:9 landscape, 18.5″ screen. In addition to the sleek design, the IA1900 is especially quiet with noise levels less than 25dB, and includes a great power saving design based off of the Intel Atom N270 chipset. Convenient VESA wall mount brackets are available that will enable the user or administrator to have a solution that literally will occupy zero desktop footprint. CLI continues the innovation by thinking ‘outside the box’, and responding to customer requests to develop state of the art thin client solutions.

“This is only the first step in CLI’s office integration strategy,” say Jason McGeough, Director of Product Development for Computer Lab International. “In addition to the form factor and the zero footprint possibilities of this platform, the power saving architecture delivering that quality performance are huge differentiators.”

The IA1900 will consume only 45W at full speed operation. This provides the ultra slim, ultra quiet computing platform while offering unparalleled security with an elegant, space saving form factor. “Customer response has been tremendous,” says TC Lin, Executive Vice President of CLI. “Once again we have responded to the request of our customer base to bring innovation to the all-in-one thin client market. We knew we would not be first to market with the Intel Atom, so why not respond to our customer base by providing Intel Atom solutions that will not only deliver the performance and energy savings of the platform, but also where the customer needs it most.”

The CLI Windows CE OS offerings do not currently have VMWare View support.  VMWare does not develop a VMView client for Windows CE,  therefore we do not have it.  It is possible for us to develop our own,  and tie into the VMWare API,  but this has not been a priority as we could get in a constant development cycle of trying to keep the VMview agent current with the feature set support.    

If VMWare offers a Windows CE VMview client,  we will embed it,  but we will not join the “frenzy” of developing our own client for that work to be obsolete in 2,  4,  or 6 months.  VMWare has done the development on Linux and XPe clients,  both of which we will support and both of which will provide a better user experience with less overhead from the perspective of managing a business and doing software development.  

As always,  CLI prioritizes our customers,  and can react accordingly to accommodate feature requests if the business justification is there.   

We are frequently getting questions in regards to multimedia and USB virtualization support on our thin clients.  We should all be very familiar with the competitive options,  but the CLI stance differs from the philosophy of some competitors.    Thin client competitors have been spending substantial amounts of money trying to become a software companies,  and focusing heavy development efforts around creating user experience enrichment tools.  This technology essentially creates a virtual channel to leverage the desktop resources of the client to support multimedia,  USB virtualization,  etc.  

Much money has been spent doing development around software which is more and more rapidly being commoditized.  Citrix has developed a new version of the ICA protocol they are naming HDX,  which aims to give the user a consistent user experience of a PC.  Additionally,  technologies like Teradici,  RGS,  and TCX have been licensed by VMWare which enables CLI clients to be able to support these features.   

CLI is not going to focus on developing a software solution for this,  because our technology alliance partners like VMWare and Citrix will be doing so.  Additionally,  RDP 7 is on the roadmap,  and more and more of these “user experience enrichment” features are becoming the standard.  Microsoft made a acquisition of a company called “Calista” that will introduce features that enable a much richer user experience.  With that being said,  the value of the end user enrichment features is becoming less and less to those that are not true virtualization software developers.  Soon that line of business will be dead and these features will be bundled and provided by the backend software solution vendors like VMWare,  Citrix,  and Microsoft.   

Windows CE will continue to be the “red-headed” stepchild of the thin client world.  It’s file system is restrictive,  and software developers are focusing on porting features to Linux and XPE (Win32),  not to Windows CE.   

At the Windows 2008 Server launch,  Microsoft highlighted initiatives around enriching the user experience in server centric desktop solutions.  CLI will continue to support these innovations,  as well as those from technology partners like VMWare,  Citrix,  and Microsoft;  those true software developers that continue to set the standard for technology moving forward.

The maximum memory capabilities of each platform is broken down below:

•  IA1060/IA1900 - 2 GB maximum RAM / No known maximum Flash (SATA DOM)
• ST5500/ST6500 - 1 GB maximum RAM / No known maximum Flash (IDE DOM)
• MT3500 - 512GB maximum RAM / 2GB or greater maximum Flash (DOM; subject to CLI review)
• ET4500 - 1GB maximum RAM / 1GB maximum Flash (DOM;  subject to CLI review)