Microsoft Windows is a product line of proprietary graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and sub-families that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry – Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation, Windows Server for a server and Windows IoT for an embedded system. Defunct families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, and Windows Embedded Compact.
QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market.
A Pocket PC is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile or Windows Embedded Compact operating system that has some of the abilities of modern desktop PCs. The name was introduced by Microsoft in 2000 as a rebranding of the Palm-size PC category. Some of these devices also had integrated phone and data capabilities, which were called Pocket PC Phone Edition. Windows "Smartphone" is another Windows CE based platform for non-touch flip phones or dumber phones.
An Embedded Operating System (EOS) is an operating system designed specifically for embedded computer systems. These systems aim to enhance functionality and reliability to perform dedicated tasks. When the multitasking method employed allows for timely task execution, such an OS may qualify as a real-time operating system (RTOS).
Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the foundation of several classes of devices including the Handheld PC, Pocket PC, Auto PC, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7 and others.
In computing, Physical Address Extension (PAE), sometimes referred to as Page Address Extension, is a memory management feature for the x86 architecture. PAE was first introduced by Intel in the Pentium Pro, and later by AMD in the Athlon processor. It defines a page table hierarchy of three levels (instead of two), with table entries of 64 bits each instead of 32, allowing these CPUs to directly access a physical address space larger than 4 gigabytes (232 bytes).
Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
Internet Explorer Mobile was a mobile version of Internet Explorer developed by Microsoft, based on versions of the MSHTML (Trident) layout engine. IE Mobile comes loaded by default with Windows Phone and Windows CE. Later versions of Internet Explorer Mobile are based on the desktop version of Internet Explorer. Older versions however, called Pocket Internet Explorer, are not based on the same layout engine.
Windows CE 5.0 is a successor to Windows CE 4.2, the third release in the Windows CE .NET family. It was first released on July 9, 2004. Like its predecessors, Windows CE 5.0 is marketed towards the embedded device market and independent device vendors. Windows CE 5.0 is billed as a low-cost, compact, fast-to-market, real-time operating system available for x86, ARM, MIPS, and SuperH microprocessor-based systems.
The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework is a version of the .NET Framework that is designed to run on resource constrained mobile/embedded devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, factory controllers, set-top boxes, etc. The .NET Compact Framework uses some of the same class libraries as the full .NET Framework and also a few libraries designed specifically for mobile devices such as .NET Compact Framework controls. However, the libraries are not exact copies of the .NET Framework; they are scaled down to use less space.
Windows Embedded CE 6.0 is the sixth major release of the Microsoft Windows embedded operating system targeted to enterprise-specific tools such as industrial controllers and consumer electronics devices like digital cameras. CE 6.0 features a kernel that supports 32,768 processes, up from the 32-process limit of prior versions. Each process receives 2 GB of virtual address space, up from 32 MB. Windows Embedded CE is commonly used in supermarket self-checkouts and cars as a display. Windows Embedded CE is a background system on most devices that have it.
Windows IoT, short for Windows Internet of Things and formerly known as Windows Embedded, is a family of operating systems from Microsoft designed for use in embedded systems. Microsoft has three different subfamilies of operating systems for embedded devices targeting a wide market, ranging from small-footprint, real-time devices to point of sale (POS) devices like kiosks. Windows Embedded operating systems are available to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), who make it available to end users preloaded with their hardware, in addition to volume license customers in some cases.
Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich internet applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation, and gave support to developers for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.
Perst is an open source, dual license, object-oriented embedded database management system (ODBMS). Both the Java programming language, and the C# programming language versions are compact and Perst has been implemented on smart phones running the Android and Windows Phone (WP7) operating systems.
Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms.
An embedded database system is a database management system (DBMS) which is tightly integrated with an application software; it is embedded in the application. It is a broad technology category that includes:
TenAsys is a privately owned company providing real-time software and services based on the x86 Intel Architecture and Microsoft Windows operating system.
Windows Embedded Automotive is a discontinued operating system that was part of the Windows Embedded family and based on Windows CE for use on computer systems in automobiles. The operating system is developed by Microsoft through the Microsoft Automotive Business Unit that formed in August 1995. The first automotive product built by Microsoft's Automotive Business Unit debuted on December 4, 1998 as the AutoPC, and also includes Ford Sync, Kia Connect, and Blue&Me. Microsoft's Automotive Business Unit has built both the software platforms used for automotive devices as well as the devices themselves. The current focus is on the software platforms and includes two products, Microsoft Auto and Windows Automotive.
Mono is a free and open-source software framework that aims to run software made for the .NET Framework on Linux and other OSes. Originally by Ximian which was acquired by Novell, it was later developed by Xamarin which was acquired by Microsoft. In August 2024, Microsoft transferred ownership of Mono to WineHQ.
