Windows CE Explained
By WC Staff last updated

Now, somewhere in the back of my mind I'd always thought "Windows CE is gone, fool, it's been replaced by Windows Mobile" whenever I saw a reference to CE. Thanks be to Mikehall, whose blog is a treasure trove of Windows CE knowledge. Turns out that Windows CE is just a set of building blocks with which you can create an OS, like Windows Mobile.
A very common question that perhaps needs some explanation is the difference between Windows Mobile 5.0 and Windows Embedded CE 6.0 - so here's the explanation.Windows Embedded CE is a hard real-time, componentized operating system that can be used by developers to build a wide range of embedded devices - you can think of the operating system as a box of Lego blocks, with CE 6.0 there are approximately 700 components (or Lego blocks) that make up the operating system, a developer gets to pick and choose which components or technologies they put into their embedded operating system design
Read: Mikehall's Embedded WEblog : Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded CE - what's the difference ? (opens in new tab)
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