Microsoft abandoned Windows Embedded in favor of IoT, but why abandoning developers too?

Copper Contributor

Hello,

 

There still are many-many Windows Embedded and CE based devices out there in the industrial field. HMIs, BCRs, and so on - it still is a great platform for some purposes. I also have some active projects for Windows Compact Embedded 7. For some understandable reasons in the past, embedded development was bound to specific Visual Studio editions. WinCE 7 is bound to Visual Studo 2008... for ethernity. Not nice at all, but at least it works. Worked, to be more precise.

 

I have just faced the fact that the packages needed to be installed to get a fresh VS2008 installation do the WinCE workload are not available anymore. Enywhere! All external sites directed to Microsoft support download pages, and they are all dead. Just try to follow the steps described here, and you will soon see some nice pages just like this:

ZZoltan_0-1624631844259.png

I am sad and dissapointed. Microsoft had abandoned a whole market, which is business decision - but leting developers still on that market wihtout even such a minimal support is something I can't understand.

3 Replies

@ZZoltan 

 

I know I'm late to the party, but I have the downloads if you still need them.  I completely agree with you - Microsoft seems to believe that when they decide to no longer support xxx, the devices in the field simply cease to exist.  Message me if you are still looking ... 

Hello @Charles_Gilley!

You are far from being too late! It would be a huge help if you could share them with me. I still need them and I still haven't found them anywhere.

Thank you! Thank you!

:) Happy to help. Let me get them up on my share drive, and I'll send you a link.