A shot of Jameson's the cure for Microsoft's Xscale woes

Microsoft has released an update to its Windows CE operating system for handheld computers, which will finally support the Xscale family of high-performance PDA chips from Intel.

The product, codenamed Jameson, is described as an "update" to the latest version of CE - a slimmed down version of Windows for handheld devices such as PDAs and smart phones. It will now be known as CE.net 4.1.

Devices either run CE on its own, or an alternative operating system based on it, such as the popular PocketPC operating system on the iPaq from HP.

The most interesting feature of the new OS kernel is support for Intel's new generation of processors for handheld computers and smart phones, Xscale.

As reported earlier on silicon.com, the first Xscale-based devices disappointed hopes for improved performance. This was partly because the operating system wasn't written to take advantage of many of Xscale's advanced features, such as a special instruction set for speeding up video and security applications.

A Microsoft spokesman said: "Since Microsoft and Intel announced plans to jointly optimise CE.net for the PXA 250 and PXA 210 Xscale-based CPUs, work has been done to improve the performance of CE.net on these chips.

"This work has been rolled into the Jameson announcement and includes support in the compiler for some of the Xscale instruction set and an OAL layer that is available to customers."

The key word here is "some" - suggesting that even Jameson-based devices won't fully make use of Xscale's performance.

Other features of Jameson include a new file viewer for Microsoft document formats, support for speech recognition and IPv6, and improved integration with the Redmond behemoth's .Net web services programme.

Microsoft is also claiming performance improvements for Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer running on the new kernel.

PDA users may have to wait a little while to enjoy these benefits, though. The current version of PocketPC 2002 is based on an older kernel, namely CE 3.0. Microsoft's forthcoming SmartPhone platform, codenamed Stinger, will also be based on CE 3.0.

They're the only CE-based products on the current product roadmap, but a new version of PocketPC is widely anticipated for early 2003, which may well be based on a Jameson kernel.