Portable CE

A few weeks back, I posted some thoughts portable applications (basically repackaged software, such as Portable Firefox and Thunderbird that run directly from a USB keychain, CDRW, etc).

One of the comments from James Kendrick really caught my eye though: a link to a Linux based USB Virtual Private Machine. Essentially it's an entire Linux distro that provides most of the communication apps and fits on a USB keychain. You can plug it into any box, run it, and you have your entire "internet communications system" on a VM.

This was a small mind-bomb for me. The possibilities here are really cool, but to be honest, I really wanted to do something similar with a Windows based embedded operating system. Since Windows CE has a freely downloadable device emulator, I figured this could be a starting point for something interesting. Windows CE has Internet Explorer, Inbox, Messenger, Remote Desktop, etc. so why not, right?

Now, for the disclaimer: This is a work in progress after a small amount of experimenting. I make no guarantee's it will work for you, won't melt your machine or that it will solve world hunger, so cut me some slack.

Portable Windows CE

Portable Windows CE is a 'launcher' for the Windows CE device emulator that can run an emulator-based image from a USB keychain.

1. Download the Windows CE 5.0 Device Emulator.
2. Extract the emulator to a folder on your hard drive by running "setup /a". The installer will prompt you to specify a directory to extract to . For example: D:\PortableCE
3. Copy the following launcher script to the directory you extracted the setup to. You'll need to rename the file from launchce.cmd.txt to launchce.cmd

Once you have that set up, just copy the entire D:\PortableCE folder over to your USB keychain.

To launch the emulator, just plug in your USB keychain, navigate to the PortableCE folder, and run launchce.cmd. You should (hopefully) have the emulator fire up (I launched IE and navigated to furrygoat.com):

This is pretty cool! I can now go to any Windows machine, plop in the USB key, and fire up my "virtual personal machine" that runs Windows CE.

While neat, however, there's still lots to add here (if people are interested)? Some ideas:

• Need a persistent way to save the data to the emulator image on the keychain (to save favorites, configuration settings, documents, etc).
• Use the Platform Builder Evaluation Version to build a new OS image, containing Inbox and other useful applications.
• Have the launcher install/uninstall the emulator network driver.
• Get a RSS Reader in there :)
• etc