As some may know, I’ve been a longtime PPC user, actually starting with the old “Palm-size PC” back in 1998 or so.  But the topic of this post is the parent operating system of the Pocket PC (and Windows Mobile for that matter) called Windows CE.

So we’ve been working on some Windows CE based devices for our warehouse management system at work.  The goal, of course, being a fast-booting, lightweight client device to use for a web-based WM tool.

The main trouble with the devices we had, was really the WinCE operating system and its ability (or lack thereof) to be able to use EAP-TLS to secure the wireless network.  Eventually a network stack update from the manufacturer did the trick, but it was frustrating to have everything configured correctly, but have the damn software not be able to connect up.

So, it’s one more chapter in alternate operating systems.  If it’s not this it would be something else, perhaps Linux of some flavor.  I’d actually like to have the ability to work with a Linux system at work – I think there is a huge potential for the OS in what we use PCs for.  But that’s another story.

Fortunately its almost over – its been kind of fun, writing some scripts and such.  Scripts are something that I don’t get to write as much.  We use most tools right out of the box (or try to), so there is as little custom work as possible.  Still, once in awhile a need comes along for a good script, and this was one of them for me. 🙂

As much as I’ve liked Windows CE based systems in the past, I’ve had about enough of them at this point.  Working with these systems has brought the operating system’s deficiencies to the surface, and they are not pretty.