Since the point is to always be mobile, the system needs to be the main one, and not sync’ed or slaved to another. Along with portability come the functions of a true PIM, so why not provide for Outlook’s calendar to wake the hardware from standby? Providing the user with audible reminders of appointments is very basic and should not require that the system be fully powered on and logged in.

Fix the OS, PC makers fix your drivers, and cpu/gpu makers improve your chips for both performance & battery life, let’s not castrate everything to make it all work!

I can’t believe what I’m hearing…

I don’t think Windows is a good idea at all for mobile devices. It’s too bloated and one of the reasons is to be able to run all the legacy apps going back to 95/98.
Better off being as efficient as possible but still have something exciting for developers.
Linux + Adobe AIR/Silverlight?
Intel thinks so.

Having done massive amounts of optimization on Vista – disabling every service I could afford to, giving up all the eye-candy, and most of the “Wow”(?!) – I’ve given up. I have a UX180P with a 32 GB SSD drive and it still wasn’t enough to make Vista a good experience. I brought it up to the point that it was almost as fast as XP on the standard drive. I downgraded yesterday, and the speed difference is incredible. I still run 2 copies of Vista on my tablet PC and my desktop, but Vista is just not Mobile PC friendly.

Services, services, services!

The thing that kills you on Vista, more than anything else, is all of the heavy lifting, and believe me, there’s a lot of it.

Vista is hell-bent on providing you with access to ALL of your data, ALL of the time, as fast as possible by the time that you request it.

This means that it caches aggressively, moreso than any other OS that I’ve ever worked with. This is great, if you’ve got at least 2GB of RAM and a nice, speedy disk. Almost any modern CPU is overkill.

Of course, at the same time, it’s obssessed with giving you the shiniest chrome imaginable, which often involves a dedicated GPU with its own RAM, or overtaxing an embedded GPU on shared RAM.

Vista needs to ship with a Mobile Optimization Wizard, as this would solve most of the problems. Here’s what it needs to do:

1) Run an iometer-style test on the existing disk, testing a series of random and sequential accesses at various ratios, on both reads and writes.
2) Keep a log of battery life.
3) Ask the user a few questions. Do you want multiple user accounts? Do you use your computer all day long, etc. Log how often the user puts the system to sleep each day.

Use this data to determine what can and can’t be done. Disable Fast User Switching, lock down filesharing services, download ONLY security patches, and keep those small. Disable caching services, lighten up on the Aero interface, etc.

On the desktop, you can afford to optimize when the user’s away. On the laptop, the user’s rarely away. On a UMPC/micro PC/ultraportable tablet, the user is best served by having an OS that assumes that if it’s on, it’s going to need to run full-tilt before going right back to sleep. There’s no reason that Vista can’t be trained to do this, but how many users are really willing to delve that far into disabling services, tweaking the registry, and killing off 99.9% of the “Wow?” Microsoft should just admit that sometimes, the “Wow” factor just gets in the way of getting things done, and set up a massive monolithic wizard to cut it down.

Also, don’t forget that Microsoft went down this approved hardware route with XP Media Center. As a result, it wasn’t available off the self and hardly anyone bought it – despite the fact that it’s actually a very good product.

James, have you got a list of features you would be prepared to lose in a streamlined version of Windows? To be honest, the only way I think you could please everyone would be to make adding/removing features a bit more straight forward.

One other thing that occurred to me is that if you left an embedded version of Windows up to the OEMs you’d probably just end up with an almighty amount of crapware that you couldn’t get rid of.

If MS started talking about “approved” graphics chipsets and like hardware, I dare say we’d start hearing complaints about MS’s abuse of its monopoly powers and anti-competitive practices.

I’ve always preferred the Windows 95/98 approach to setup… allowing a custom install where users can, during the initial OS install pick and choose the individual components that they want.

I also **HATE** having what– 5 or 6 “flavors” of Vista, i.e. Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, etc… although I understand their logic for the madness.

As a result, it seems to me that the best option for Microsoft is to mix and match the best aspects of those options as follows:

During setup have a “Machine Profile” selection. If you choose “Multimedia Desktop” it will preconfigure all the Media Center Extensions. If you choose “Tablet PC / UMPC” it will preconfigure the system with a lightweight mobile experience with inking functionality. So-on-and-so-forth.

Also, on that screen it would have a “Custom” checkbox to allow the user to pick a predefined profile and then customize it further.

I’m not placing the blame on anyone with this, just stating what I think needs to happen to make a mainstream mobile PC. You’re all right, where do you draw the line as to what’s included and what not? For me I think keeping it as simple as possible is more important than extra features. It’s the “full experience” OS that gives us all the problems with mobile PCs today.

Give me something streamlined and light and I will be happy but more importantly so will Aunt Sally and Uncle Bill.

@Chuck, this is the problem with a cut down version of Windows. Although you may not think it’s necessary to support multiple users on a mobile device others might. I don’t think parental controls are necessary in Windows at all but other people do. Where do you draw the line?

I would love a Windows device with instant-on capabilities but I think what you describe James would end up as more of a hinderance. Just look at the trouble people used to have with Windows Mobile when a new version was released. Pocket PC manufacturers would be slow to release the new software or would refuse to altogether. Having the OS tied to the hardware to such a great extent is never a good idea – just take a look at Apple’s market share.

I think you just need to wait for SSDs to come down in price and that should give you the speed you’re longing for without having to make other sacrifices. I know I can’t wait to be able to stick one in my P1610 but I suspect that we are a few years away from them being generally available in the sorts of capacities that people actually want (32Gb just doesn’t cut it anymore). Heck, I can’t even find someone selling these things on the internet yet.

Tyler makes a good point.

I’ve *heard* about XP embedded, but I’ve never seen it or been offered it as an option on any pc, UMPC or Tablet PC. Microsoft would need to push to make that an option to the consumer from their partners.

Perhaps there is no Vista embedded because XPe (isn’t) didn’t go well.

I would take VistaE, XPe as well as an OfficeE on a UMPC or Tablet in a heart beat for the speed and battery life.

(agreeing with Chuck)And yes, kill all the multi user profiles on mobile devices. No one else uses my UMPC or Tablet unless I hand it to them. Desktops, sure, they are often shared in homes and such but a UMPC? Not often enough where there would need to be seperate user profiles.

One can push the thinking a little further…

What about creating a ROM flasher that would allow the end-user to select what software should be implemented in the ROM in addition to the tailored system?
Would be cool to put MS Office in the DVD drive, run the flasher… and boom it is added to the ROM

James – I agree with most of what you say (I can live with spinning media, especially for secondary storage), but you left out the one thing that will remove the most bloat…

How many users does your Mobile PC have? Why does it need to be multi-user? The amount of code required to support multiple users on a PERSONAL computer is significant, to say nothing of it’s uselessness on a Mobile PC.

1. embedded OS does NOT mean instant-on, i have no clue how you guys got this idea

2. Windows Mobile is NOT instant-on, it’s just sitting in stand-by. if you want to see a WM device boot just do a soft reset, it typically takes 20-30 seconds to boot.

James,
While I think that you have an excellent point, I think that you may be placing the blame on the wrong company (to some extent). As you have mentioned, MS has developed XP Embedded, which, virtually is everthing you ask for (except based on XP rather than Vista). So, lets say (hope?) that MS releases a comparable OS — Vista Embedded (seems to be an adequate assumption since they did XP, and NT 4). While that would answer your request, there is still one essential element that is missing – the device manufacturer. No matter what MS does, until they decide that they will release a HDW device, they (and therefore, we) are constrained by the folks who put out the devices. Have you ever seen a Consumer Focused UMPC/MID type device on XP Embedded (I think that the only one I remember is the Smart Displays, and those were tainted with short sightedness b/c of Marketing and Hardware limitations)? And that has been around for years!
I think that what we should be asking for is a device manufacturer to step up and create the device using XPe, or help to pressure MS to Create VistaE. Based on the literature for XPe, it can be installed in less than a GB, you can choose which elements to install (limiting device drivers to only those that are needed), and its instant on/flash based, etc. Seems like a winner, if we had the device to run it…..