Pocket PC 2000 (marketed as Pocket PC) was the first member of the
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...
family of
mobile operating system
A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on ...
s that was released on April 19, 2000, and was based on
Windows CE
Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products.
Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...
3.0. It is the successor to the operating system aboard
Palm-size PC
A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile or Windows Embedded Compact operating system that has some of the abilities of modern desktop PCs. The name was introduced by Microsoft in 2000 ...
s. Backwards compatibility was retained with such Palm-size PC applications.
Pocket PC 2000 was intended mainly for
Pocket PC devices, however several Palm-size PC devices had the ability to be updated also. Furthermore, several Pocket PC 2000 phones were released (under the name Handheld PC 2000), however at this time, Microsoft's "Smartphone" hardware platform had not yet been created.
At this time, Pocket PC devices had not been standardized with a specific CPU architecture. As a result, Pocket PC 2000 was released on multiple CPU architectures, such as
SH-3
The Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King (company designation S-61) is an American twin-engined anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopter designed and built by Sikorsky Aircraft. A landmark design, it was one of the first ASW rotorcraft to use turboshaft engi ...
,
MIPS, and
ARM
In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...
. The only resolution supported by this release was 240 x 320 (
QVGA
The graphics display resolution is the width and height dimension of an electronic visual display device, measured in pixels. This information is used for electronic devices such as a computer monitor. Certain combinations of width and height ar ...
). Removable storage card formats that were supported were
CompactFlash
CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994.
CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...
and
MultiMediaCard.
Infrared
Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...
(IR) File beaming capability was among the original hardware features.
Aesthetically, Pocket PC 2000 was similar in design to the then-current
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...
,
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...
, and the yet-to-be-released
Windows Me
Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...
desktop operating systems. This initial release had multiple built-in applications, many of them similarly branded to match their desktop counterparts, such as
Microsoft Reader
Microsoft Reader is a discontinued Microsoft application for reading e-books, first released in August 2000, that used its own .LIT format. It was available for Windows computers and Pocket PC PDAs. The name was also used later for an unrelated a ...
,
Microsoft Money
Microsoft Money was a personal finance management software program by Microsoft. It had capabilities for viewing bank account balances, creating budgets, and tracking expenses, among other features. It was designed for computers using the Micro ...
,
Pocket Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer Mobile (formerly named Pocket Internet Explorer; later called IE Mobile) is a mobile version of Internet Explorer developed by Microsoft, based on versions of the MSHTML (Trident) layout engine. IE Mobile comes loaded by defaul ...
, and
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...
. A version of
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...
called
Pocket Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...
was also bundled and included Pocket Word, Pocket Excel and Pocket Outlook. Notes, a note-taking app saw its first release and would be supported by most later versions of Windows Mobile. Mainstream support for the operating system ended on September 30, 2005, and extended support ended on October 9, 2007.
History
Microsoft long knew of the importance and potential of mobile computers, and in the 1990s had made previous attempts to capture the market. It released in 1993
Windows for Pen Computing
Windows for Pen Computing is a software suite for Windows 3.1x, that Microsoft designed to incorporate pen computing capabilities into the Windows operating environment. Windows for Pen Computing was the second major pen computing platform for x86 ...
, a software used to add
pen computing
Pen computing refers to any computer user-interface using a pen or Stylus (computing), stylus and tablet, over input devices such as a keyboard or a mouse.
Pen computing is also used to refer to the usage of mobile devices such as tablet computers ...
functions to mobile computers running
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0.
Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3 ...
. The software's potential for success was hampered by its ponderous base code and the fact that handwriting recognition technology at the time had practical limitations. Microsoft then sought to develop a device called WinPad, which would have been used to wirelessly access and synchronize data between it and desktop machines, as well as other WinPads, but its operating system's large consumption of resources caused the company to redesign as
Microsoft at Work
Microsoft at Work (MaW) was a short-lived effort promoted by Microsoft to tie together common business machinery, like fax machines and photocopiers, with a common communications protocol allowing control and status information to be shared with c ...
, an embedded operating system for office machines, with similar synchronization functions. However, its delayed, costly development and device manufacturers' subsequently abandoning it led to the project's cancellation. During that time, Microsoft also began work on a project to develop a device used to communicate with
paging systems, and its operating system was to be used in
set-top box
A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...
es, but that project proved to be too ambitious and thus folded in 1995.
The teams of the two cancelled projects were consolidated in 1995, and Microsoft hoped to create a mobile device that ran on the
Windows NT
Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system.
The first version of Win ...
kernel. It decided to use its new kernel, Windows CE, after realizing that Windows NT was too bulky to fit on a device. This kernel debuted in Microsoft's "
Handheld PC
A handheld personal computer (PC) is a miniature computer typically built around a clamshell form factor and is significantly smaller than any standard laptop computer, but based on the same principles. It is sometimes referred to as a ''palmto ...
", and reappeared in the company's
Palm-size PC
A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile or Windows Embedded Compact operating system that has some of the abilities of modern desktop PCs. The name was introduced by Microsoft in 2000 ...
, both of which were criticized for their slow performance, short battery life, and graphical user interface. With these devices, Microsoft had only ten percent of the
personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant (PDA), also known as a handheld PC, is a variety mobile device which functions as a personal information manager. PDAs have been mostly displaced by the widespread adoption of highly capable smartphones, in partic ...
(PDA) market share, whereas its rival,
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. was an American company that specialized in manufacturing personal digital assistants (PDAs) and various other electronics. They were the designer of the PalmPilot, the first PDA successfully marketed worldwide, as well as the Treo 6 ...
, had over half of it.
[
Microsoft reapproached Windows CE's design in the development of its third PDA, then codenamed "Rapier".][ Its desktop user interface was replaced with one more suited for mobile devices, more applications came preinstalled, and the company more firmly defined and extended both the hardware and software specifications to ensure software compatibility.][ Windows CE 3.0 became the operating system for Microsoft's next PDA and the first member of the Windows Mobile family, Pocket PC, and it was launched on April 19, 2000.] A Japanese-language edition of Pocket PC was released in Japan on July 13. To distinguish it from its successors, the operating system is referred to as Pocket PC 2000.
System features
Built on the Windows CE 3.0 kernel, the user interface was designed from the ground up to more closely resemble Palm OS
Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) was a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is pro ...
's and much less that of a personal computer, while still retaining the look and feel of Windows desktops.[ The first screen that is displayed upon booting is the Today screen, where the user can check their email inbox and view the calendar and their scheduled appointments and tasks, as well as the device's owner information. The top of the screen is filled by a navigation bar, which on the left side contains a button that opens the ]Start menu
The Start menu is a graphical user interface element used in Microsoft Windows since Windows 95 and in other operating systems. It provides a central launching point for computer programs and performing other tasks in the Windows shell. It is name ...
and on the right the current time. On the bottom of the screen is a "command bar", containing menus and buttons that execute commands for programs. The user navigates the interface by tapping the stylus and pressing the buttons on the device. New to Microsoft's line of PDAs is tapping and holding on items to open context menu
A context menu (also called contextual, shortcut, and pop up or pop-up menu) is a menu in a graphical user interface (GUI) that appears upon user interaction, such as a right-click mouse operation. A context menu offers a limited set of choic ...
s, analogous to right-clicking on a desktop computer.
When the Start button is tapped, the Start menu drops down, revealing a bar of six last-run applications, a number of pinned applications, the menus where the applications and system settings are located, the ability to search files' names and contents, and an online application that provides help relevant to the current program. Files are managed using the File Explorer
File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the f ...
. They may be placed inside folders, and are all found inside the root folder, My Device. Character input is provided via either an online character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
or handwriting recognition
Handwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other de ...
system or an on-screen keyboard.
Pocket PC 2000 is bundled with a pocket version of Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...
, an office suite
Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital painting ...
that features pocket versions of Excel
ExCeL London (an abbreviation for Exhibition Centre London) is an exhibition centre, international convention centre and former hospital in the Custom House area of Newham, East London. It is situated on a site on the northern quay of the ...
and Word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...
. Also included is a pocket version of the web browser Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...
, based on version 3.1. Features of version 3.1 not supported by Pocket Internet Explorer are Java applet
Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...
s; VBScript
VBScript (''"Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition"'') is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft that is modeled on Visual Basic. It allows Microsoft Windows system administrators to generate powerful tools for managing computers ...
; and the HTML tag
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScrip ...
s , , , , , , and . The web browser's encryption key size
In cryptography, key size, key length, or key space refer to the number of bits in a key used by a cryptographic algorithm (such as a cipher).
Key length defines the upper-bound on an algorithm's security (i.e. a logarithmic measure of the faste ...
is only 40 bits long, rather than 128 bits at the time. Microsoft released a separate add-on offering support for the 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securi ...
protocol.
The capabilities of the hardware devices running Pocket PC made the operating system suitable for multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
and playing Windows CE games. Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player (application software), media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing sound reproduction, audio, video and viewing images on personal computers runnin ...
is used to play back MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
and WMA files. Voice Recorder
A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorder.
The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark of the company of the same ...
is used to capture sound via the device's microphone, which is then saved in the WAV
Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...
format, and can be played back here. A majority of the games for Windows CE were made freely downloadable from the Internet, and a few were titles launched commercially at retail stores and on websites. Included in every Pocket PC device is the phenomenal card game Microsoft Solitaire
Solitaire is a computer game included with Microsoft Windows, based on a card game of the same name, also known as Klondike. Its original version was programmed by Wes Cherry, and the cards were designed by Susan Kare.
History
Microsoft has ...
. The rest of the games are installed by connecting the device to and running the setup program on a computer.
Hardware
All Pocket PC 2000 devices have a USB
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...
port and an infrared port that meets the Infrared Data Association
The Infrared Data Association (IrDA) is an industry-driven interest group that was founded in 1994 by around 50 companies. IrDA provides specifications for a complete set of protocols for wireless infrared communications, and the name "IrDA" also ...
standard. The USB port has the sole function of synchronizing data with PCs and does not support peripherals. The infrared port is used to transfer data between PCs or other Pocket PC devices at a maximum speed of 115.2 kbps.
Most Pocket PC 2000 devices shipped with 32 MB of random access memory (RAM) and a few had an expansion slot for memory card
A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a so ...
s. These slots supported PC cards and those for mobile devices, such as the CompactFlash
CompactFlash (CF) is a flash memory mass storage device used mainly in portable electronic devices. The format was specified and the devices were first manufactured by SanDisk in 1994.
CompactFlash became one of the most successful of the e ...
. The memory itself is used to store both files and working data, and is allocated to either of them both automatically and manually. At this time, there was no set standard for which instruction set architecture to use, but all devices used either MIPS, SH-3
The Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King (company designation S-61) is an American twin-engined anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopter designed and built by Sikorsky Aircraft. A landmark design, it was one of the first ASW rotorcraft to use turboshaft engi ...
, or StrongARM
The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM architecture, ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in ...
processors. The processors ran with top speeds ranging from 131 to 206 MHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...
.
Reception
'' CNET'' compared Pocket PC 2000 and Palm OS devices and considered the latter to be its favorite personal digital assistant, scoring it 8 points out of 10—one point higher than Pocket PC—because of its simple interface, stability, and lower price. It praised Pocket PC's improved user interface, bundled applications and ability to continuously synchronize mobile and desktop computer data, but criticized its inconsistent character recognition system. It concluded that Pocket PC was best suited for users who liked Windows and were unconcerned about budget. ''InfoWorld
''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...
'' viewed the operating system as an excellent platform for application developers, especially those writing in C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
, praising the ease of development and portability of Windows applications, as well as support for networking and database access, although criticizing the lack of scripting in JScript
JScript is Microsoft's legacy dialect of the ECMAScript standard that is used in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 11 and older.
JScript is implemented as an Active Scripting engine. This means that it can be "plugged in" to OLE Automation applic ...
and VBScript and decisions by hardware manufacturers such as to limit the devices to one expansion slot, not design their USB ports for expandability, and an underpowered infrared. It wrote that Pocket PC was a viable alternative to laptops for its price.
Within ten months, one million devices running Pocket PC 2000 were shipped. In May 2001, the figure was 1.25 million. NPD Intelect reported that in the US, the devices made for 26 percent of sales priced at $350 or higher, but only 10 percent of sales overall, and that Palm OS devices filled almost all of the rest of the market share. By August, about two million Pocket PC devices were sold. The best-selling model series was Compaq
Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
's iPAQ
The iPAQ is a discontinued Pocket PC and personal digital assistant which was first unveiled by Compaq in April 2000.
HP's line-up of iPAQ devices included PDA-devices, smartphones and GPS-navigators. A substantial number of devices were ...
, which had dominated the market since its debut in 2000. The operating system's successor, Pocket PC 2002
Pocket PC 2002, originally codenamed "Merlin", was a member of the Windows Mobile family of mobile operating systems, released on October 4, 2001. Like Pocket PC 2000, it was based on Windows CE 3.0.
Although mainly targeted for ( QVGA) Pocket ...
, was released in October 2001.
References
Further reading
*
External links
Official website
.
.
{{Windows Mobile
2000 software
Windows CE devices
Windows Mobile