Should I use XPe or CE

[ryguyb9]

Hello,
We are looking at upgrading all our current XPe thin clients within the next
couple years. We are wondering if we should got with XPe or CE? Since we
are a hospital I think it's nice to have our program able to run from XPe
without requiring a server connection. However we have considered creating a
server farm using Terminal Services 2008 and runnning the remote apps from
there on CE? I have no experience with CE at all and am looking for some
insight on what would be a better option for us?
Thanks!
Ryan

 

[Luke Alcatel]

Ryan,
It's not clear to me whether this will be a build or buy decision and I can
talk about build issues only.

I used XPe for a couple of years before undertaking an assessment of CE
about 2 years ago. My comments are based on my experience only. I am the
sole Win-Embedded developer in my organization and I am able to build
systems without vendor-provided BSPs (board support packages) or drivers. I
can do that using tap.exe and Component Designer to make driver components.
I found equivalent tasks in CE to be overwhelming. I think that if your
vendor has a BSP for your device then CE is viable for a lone developer or
small organization. If not, I think you will spend inordinate time with
much frustration trying to develop your own BSP.

Documentation is another problem. All the books I found (at least those
that come close to CE ver. 6) only deal with application development. The
available MS documentation is a blend of several rev. levels and when I
could only find a ver 4 or 5 description I could never be sure that the same
thing would work in ver 6. As a concrete example, for development purposes
there are a lot of references in the docs that state an NDIS compatible NIC
is required. This capability can only be found on legacy ISA bus NICs.
That is not a very viable solution for a new project and I could never (at
that time) find an alternative described.

Since you are dealing with thin clients where power consumption and memory
is presumably not much of an issue, nor is hard real-time needed, I think
you may find it easier to live with XPe.

Luke