Microsoft announces Windows NT Embedded 4.0

Microsoft Corporation on Tuesday unveiled the latest member of the WindowsNT 4.0 family, Windows NT Embedded (NTE) 4.0, which is designed for use intelecommunications, office automation, medical fields, industrial automation, and retail point-of-sales devices. NTE is currently in alphatesting and should be released sometime in 1999. The company promises aversion of NTE based on Windows 2000 as well.

Jon Frederiksen tried to clear up some of the confusing differences betweenNTE and Windows CE during the product's announcement at the Embedded Systems West Conference in San Jose.

"NT Embedded targets the high-end, and Windows CE the low-end," he said. "It depends on the footprint of the solution a customer wants, and the feature set needed, such as Win32 capabilities, or BackOffice integration."

NTE supports devices that don't require a mouse, keyboard or display andFLASH media support enables it to run from read-only media. NTE is alsoremotely manageable.

For more information, please visit the Microsoft Embedded Systems site

Perhaps not coincidentally, Sun Microsystems also announced today that ithad completed the specification for Embedded Java, an NTE competitor thatis based on its Java programming language. For more information, please visit the Embedded Java Web site