I'm privileged enough to be a part of this venture, and I'm looking forward to sharing my Windows CE experiences with you all. It's an exciting platform that's growing by leaps and bounds, and it's sure to revolutionize the world of computing in the next few years. Don't believe me? Windows CE is completely different from anything Microsoft has ever done before, and I'll explain why in this series of articles.

In the beginning…
I'm the kind of person that likes having information with me. I need to have phone numbers, addresses and notes with me all the time. I like to think I'm organized, and having to say "I don't know if I can make it" or "I don't have that phone number with me" to someone is both unprofessional and frustrating. I started off with a pen and paper system -- the classic Day-Timer. That worked for awhile, but it was cumbersome to carry with me all the time. I wanted something smaller and faster, so I picked up a Sharp Wizard -- with what, at that time, seemed like a mammoth 64k of RAM, I could store hundreds of contacts and appointments! I wasn't willing to spending the $1000+ that other units like the Newton cost, so I settled for something in the middle.

I painstakingly entered in all my data, and used the unit constantly for nearly a year until one day, without warning, it just died. It wasn't the batteries -- I kept them fresh. I hadn't invested in the "PC synchronization" software for the Sharp because it was designed for Windows 3.1, and I was on Windows 95. Lucky for me, I had written down all my contact information only days before! Still, I had no idea what appointments were coming up in the next few weeks. There's a reason I relied on it so heavily -- my memory is horrible!

My next step
Frustrated at how poorly the various devices interacted with my PC, I went back to the pen and paper system. I was looking for something that was designed to work with my PC, not just something that "might" work with it using various software hacks. I had been reading reports of a forthcoming Microsoft "portable PC solution", and I was greatly anticipating it. The project went by many names (i.e., Pulsar, WinPad, Pegasus) but didn't materialize for a long time. I kept using my Day-Timer, anticipating the day when Microsoft would finally make their much-hyped portable-PC an available solution. It finally happened, and it was named Windows CE.

A rough start
Windows CE 1.0 had several antecedents that never really got off the ground. Microsoft began a project code-named "Pulsar", but complications grew from the conflicting needs of the two planned uses for Pulsar: set-top boxes for interactive TV, and hand-held computing devices. One group wanted to make the OS bigger and more multimedia-heavy, while the other felt it needed to be kept small. Another Microsoft team tried pulling NT apart to see how small they could get a functional OS, but it was still too large for the small devices. A third approach was being developed by the WinPad team, using a subset of the 16-bit Windows 3.1 operating system.