Thread: Microsoft releases Windows Embedded Automotive 7

Well, I actually like wifi to be on instantly, as I have lots of apps and gadgets that depend on it (traffic, calendar, email, etc.).

As for hardware detection, does that mean another OS for portable devices (tablets, notebooks, other docking PCs)? I mean, it's important (for me) for the device to be able to detect hardware changes as it is undocked, docked in different stations. Even after resume from sleep/hibernation. Win7 (or CF) screws up that from time to time. I have a docking station at the office with mouse and a dedicated keyboard, another at the kitchen with one portable keyboard/pointing stick thing, and now another dock in the car with HD radio and space navigator/no keyboard. More importantantly in the car I have another screen and (edit: external sound card), and sometimes I have to reboot because CF/RR do not recognize some of that if it just wakes up (even when win7 is fine with it).

I don't know why hardware detection is such a big deal, but apparently it is.

Originally Posted by RipplingHurst

Well, I actually like wifi to be on instantly, as I have lots of apps and gadgets that depend on it (traffic, calendar, email, etc.).

Its all relative....nothing is instant on-you have to wait for the PC to boot. The question is, do you want to wait 15 seconds from the time you hit the power button until anything works...or would you rather have music in 10 and wifi in 15? Personally I prefer the latter and I think most other users would as well.

Originally Posted by RipplingHurst

As for hardware detection, does that mean another OS for portable devices (tablets, notebooks, other docking PCs)? I mean, it's important (for me) for the device to be able to detect hardware changes as it is undocked, docked in different stations. Even after resume from sleep/hibernation. Win7 (or CF) screws up that from time to time. I have a docking station at the office with mouse and a dedicated keyboard, another at the kitchen with one portable keyboard/pointing stick thing, and now another dock in the car with HD radio and space navigator/no keyboard. More importantantly in the car I have another screen and (edit: external sound card), and sometimes I have to reboot because CF/RR do not recognize some of that if it just wakes up (even when win7 is fine with it).

I don't know why hardware detection is such a big deal, but apparently it is.

Two different things here...removable device enumeration always has to occur (since there could be ipods, removable drives, etc plugged in)...its core hardware that shouldn't have to be. Things like internal hard drive, wifi adapter, sound card, cpu, etc. that rarely change shouldn't have to be re-detected every boot.

Originally Posted by justchat_1

Its all relative....nothing is instant on-you have to wait for the PC to boot. The question is, do you want to wait 15 seconds from the time you hit the power button until anything works...or would you rather have music in 10 and wifi in 15? Personally I prefer the latter and I think most other users would as well.

Well, not the users who kept OEM equip where the carputer playing music is just another option for entertainment, but the only one for traffic, news, everything else.

Two different things here...removable device enumeration always has to occur (since there could be ipods, removable drives, etc plugged in)...its core hardware that shouldn't have to be. Things like internal hard drive, wifi adapter, sound card, cpu, etc. that rarely change shouldn't have to be re-detected every boot.

I agree but, at home/office I use wi-fi, 3G via usb in the car; sound card changes also, from internal at home/office to external Tascam usb (then the internal is for the rear passengers). So I see very much sense in MS approach if that's what you're pointing at.

Maybe I'm in the exception here too, but still all notebooks are in the same category.

Originally Posted by justchat_1

oh trust me I know lol

Actually I haven't experienced a post-startup slowdown on windows since windows 98 (which is probably the last time you used windows)... but you do have a point and i think the right balance lies somewhere in the middle. Just because microsoft screwed the idea up doesn't mean the idea is flawed just microsofts implementation of it.
Microsofts implementation is a free for all...everything tries to load at once after startup, and they all use the default thread priority which causes them to fight with UI apps. The proper approach to this is a managed init sequence post boot. Instead of having everything load at once you have a post boot script that handles loading everything not required to boot the PC and does so at a lower thread priority. This prevents resource lockup, lag, and the other negative effects of the microsoft approach. The goal of booting should be just that, to boot the PC. It should get the bare minimum running to display the UI and get music playing. Things like wifi are fine to not have running until 5-10seconds after boot if the boot time is 3-4seconds faster.
The other half of this is getting rid of the hardware detection steps. Hardware enumeration should only occur when hardware changes, re-enumerating devices and detecting settings on every boot is a giant waste of time and resources...surely this 1980s approach is due for a modern update.
As you can tell I'm not saying windows or any other OS does it "better" just that none of them do it the best way for a carPC.

The last time I used windows was right before Vista came out. I was using XP before most people were. I won a free copy in a local university programming contest back when I was in high school. I actually like XP a lot. It's by far my favorite Windows OS. What I said was from experience of using XP. At some point my motherboard died and I didn't want to call up microsoft to get my key renewed when I reinstalled. I was using Linux a bit at that point and decided to make the full switch for a while. Never looked back after that. I continued using XP at work up until 2009. I've been all Linux everywhere since then.

Linux booting has been improved greatly in the past 3 years or so. One of the major improvements have been faster filesystems and sreadahead. sreadahead loads frequently used blocks from the disk into memory in parallel during the boot process so user applications boot up instantly. This was useful in helping nghost start up quickly (even though it was already near instant to begin with). If it's not useful, it can always be removed which is another cool thing about Linux, you can totally modify the way it boots.

Nasa's MeeGo boot at AFKfest was probably the fastest I've ever seen a system boot. I think he would have beat my best times with LinuxICE using Ubuntu.

At any rate, it's nice to be able to boot fast, but I think that a power efficiency race will trump the booting arms race. Being able to stay on in some low power mode is far more useful then being dead asleep.

Originally Posted by tripzero

At any rate, it's nice to be able to boot fast, but I think that a power efficiency race will trump the booting arms race. Being able to stay on in some low power mode is far more useful then being dead asleep.

Couldn't agree more. Windows 7's hybrid sleep mode is a heaven, and I heard windows 8 will have more of that instant on feel. I'm hoping the computer will still be alive and connected somehow, so that it can wake itself up and pop a message or something and then go back to sleep, a bit like the iPhone or the iPad does. Right now hybrid sleep loses connection.

As for Windows Embedded Automotive, I'd like to see more small OSs in the enthusiast/oem market. I'm amazed how fast and responsive the iPad is, compared to some netbooks I've seen. I'd kind of wish Windows E. Automotive would work like iOS, built for processors like those on the iPad/iPhone, Silverlight and HTML5 and all that graphic intensive crap ready, only more open.

Originally Posted by RipplingHurst

Couldn't agree more. Windows 7's hybrid sleep mode is a heaven, and I heard windows 8 will have more of that instant on feel. I'm hoping the computer will still be alive and connected somehow, so that it can wake itself up and pop a message or something and then go back to sleep, a bit like the iPhone or the iPad does. Right now hybrid sleep loses connection.

Stuff like the smartphones is exactly what I'm talking about. "Dead asleep" to me means any form of hibernate/suspend/completely-off mode that breaks the ability to process things. Right now we have hardware that has the power envelope to do this: igepv2 and beagleboard. Atoms will eventually get there as well.

Originally Posted by justchat_1

Windows embedded requires a one time license fee...which makes it prohibitively expensive for anything less then 100 licenses (more like 1000)...

Good. That'll prevent the noobs from taking advantage of this as a prepackaged plug n play solution they can buy from the nearest electronics store and separate them from the true enthusiasts (you and me).