We are a small company looking to do some inhouse programming using tablets. Initially we were going to move forward on an Android Honeycomb platform because we have only Java developers here. But it looks like we can't get rugged tablets for that platform. There seem to be a lot more rugged tablets that are Windows based.
Initially I thought that we would have to use C# /.Net to code for native applications for the Windows tablets (and Windows specific API). But a colleague of mine thought we could use Java to build native applications on the Windows tablets also. Is this true? Can I use Java to build applications that can be deployed both to the Windows tablets and the Honeycombs? Our applications will also use GPS location based services. Any feedback/pointers would be sincerely appreciated. Thanks.
What devices are you talking about? Phones (running Windows Mobile 6 or Windows Phone 7) or tablets (like the iPad, currently running Windows 7 and in the future Windows 8)?
Most of Windows-based tablets are based in just normal Windows computers on x86 processor. Only very few are Windows CE-based.
On Windows XP/7 tablet PCs you can write in Java without any problem. I am not sure about GPS usage, but it can be read using JNI or just serial port. You can have some common classes/class libraries for Windows and Android, but the device logic and UI needs to be specific (and the JVM is different - Sun JVM vs. Dalvik).
On Windows 8 with "Metro", however, there is no sign yet you can develop WinRT apps using Java.
I am talking about Windows 7 tablets (and Windows 8 in future)
If you want create an app you need C# and silverlight
stre67 said:
I am talking about Windows 7 tablets (and Windows 8 in future)
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Well for Windows 7 you can develop using more or less whatever you prefer since there are no differences between the OS on the desktop and a tablet.
So yes, you can use Java for Windows 7.
There is some API for Location services in Windows 7 however I don't know the details about this.
I also don't know much about Android, but if you can develop for Android in Java you can at least share some code between the Windows 7 and Android version of your software.
Windows 8 will introduce a new kind of app (metro-style app) and those apps can only be written in HTML5 and Javascript or C#/VB.Net/C++/C and XAML.
However, users will still be able to use your Java Apps on Windows 8.
so it looks like Windows 7 is like a windows 7 PC. I can't find any specific books on amazon, so I do apologize if my questions are stupid.
1) Can I develop a Java application similar to that of a desktop and deploy the EAR/WAR file to the windows 7 tablet? if so, does the tablet have an inbuilt web server type application (websphere, tomcat) to serve pages? if not, will the app be loaded on a remote server and be accessed via a browser? In this case the tablet will need an internet connection all the time, correct?
Thanks again.
A Windows 7 Tablet is basically just running the desktop version of Windows 7 so you can do anything with the tablet that you could do with a Windows 7 desktop machine.
Note that Windows Phone 7 is an entirely different operating system that's barely connected.
There's already a great thread where people are reporting what USB/Bluetooth items will and won't work on the Surface RT.
According to Pluggable, a manufacturer of USB peripherals, the problem lies much deeper: Windows RT doesn't support any USB device requiring a driver, and support may never come. It says:
"Windows RT does not have a Device Driver Development Kit and does not support or allow the installation of drivers. There is currently no Windows Update for Windows RT from which to match and download newly approved drivers for new device types from 3rd parties."
In short, the only devices which will work are devices which have traditionally had in-box support in Windows and never require a 3rd party driver to be installed: USB hubs, USB Mass Storage (USB hard drives and flash drives), USB Audio (headsets and mics), some USB printers, most USB video (webcams), USB HID (keyboards and mice), and a few other special cases.
I knew RT drivers would be a problem; this article implies that the drivers may never be coming at all.
AndyRathbone said:
There's already a great thread where people are reporting what USB/Bluetooth items will and won't work on the Surface RT.
According to Pluggable, a manufacturer of USB peripherals, the problem lies much deeper: Windows RT doesn't support any USB device requiring a driver, and support may never come. It says:
"Windows RT does not have a Device Driver Development Kit and does not support or allow the installation of drivers. There is currently no Windows Update for Windows RT from which to match and download newly approved drivers for new device types from 3rd parties."
In short, the only devices which will work are devices which have traditionally had in-box support in Windows and never require a 3rd party driver to be installed: USB hubs, USB Mass Storage (USB hard drives and flash drives), USB Audio (headsets and mics), some USB printers, most USB video (webcams), USB HID (keyboards and mice), and a few other special cases.
I knew RT drivers would be a problem; this article implies that the drivers may never be coming at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i think they just have to submit drivers to microsoft to have them work, my canon 5d mk 3 worked out of the box and i've had to install drivers for all my dslr's in windows before
When you plug in an unsupported device, does it at least attempt to search windows update for a driver? Or are all supported drivers included in the device?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Skitals said:
When you plug in an unsupported device, does it at least attempt to search windows update for a driver? Or are all supported drivers included in the device?
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Click to collapse
That's a good question. To control things, I turned on Airplane Mode. Then I plugged in an Easy Transfer Cable.
Surface RT recognized the cable, and USB Transfer Device appeared in Device Manager, but with the yellow exclamation point.
I turned off Airplane Mode, opened the Device Manager's Properties window for the USB Transfer Device, and told it to search automatically for updated driver software.
After visiting Windows Update, it gave me this message: "Windows was unable to find driver software for your device. If you know the manufacturer of your device, you can visit its website and check the support section for driver software."
I'm thinking Windows RT only accepts USB items that the OS natively recognizes: cameras, external storage devices, mice/keyboards, and a few other things. It won't accept anything requiring a third-party driver because Microsoft doesn't want to introduce that as a possible security hole.
I would be surprised if MS would not provide a driver development kit.
WinRT is basically a recompiled version of Win8 for the ARM. So in theory I would be able to take my C/C++ coded driver and run it through an ARM compiler to produce the correct dll.
Just made a quick look around, and I see the essential dll's required to implement a proper windows system driver. So it should work...
draftQ said:
I would be surprised if MS would not provide a driver development kit.
WinRT is basically a recompiled version of Win8 for the ARM. So in theory I would be able to take my C/C++ coded driver and run it through an ARM compiler to produce the correct dll.
Just made a quick look around, and I see the essential dll's required to implement a proper windows system driver. So it should work...
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Just like you should be able to take your C/C++ desktop app and run it through the ARM compiler and it should work (like Office RT), but it doesn't. MS has it locked down tight. They are going the completely closed ecosystem route... like Apple (iOS).
Its a shame, because it otherwise has the potential of full blown windows 8. No reason we shouldn't have recompiled ARM versions of VLC and other open source desktop apps, but MS is keeping developers in the metro sandbox.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
This was incorrect
AndyRathbone said:
There's already a great thread where people are reporting what USB/Bluetooth items will and won't work on the Surface RT.
According to Pluggable, a manufacturer of USB peripherals, the problem lies much deeper: Windows RT doesn't support any USB device requiring a driver, and support may never come. It says:
"Windows RT does not have a Device Driver Development Kit and does not support or allow the installation of drivers. There is currently no Windows Update for Windows RT from which to match and download newly approved drivers for new device types from 3rd parties."
In short, the only devices which will work are devices which have traditionally had in-box support in Windows and never require a 3rd party driver to be installed: USB hubs, USB Mass Storage (USB hard drives and flash drives), USB Audio (headsets and mics), some USB printers, most USB video (webcams), USB HID (keyboards and mice), and a few other special cases.
I knew RT drivers would be a problem; this article implies that the drivers may never be coming at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi gang-
I work for Plugable, not trying to advertise, but just want to share some news.
Then information we're quoted in above turned out to be wrong.
We've updated the post referenced above,
[Update: 11/16/2012] We had previously incorrectly written that device drivers aren’t installable on Windows RT. That’s not right.
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We've also added a follow up where we explain how to install a driver on a Windows RT device. Here's the new post.
We're very sorry about providing the misleading information, but we'll be working hard towards being open about news and developments.
I'm game to explain how we arrived at the bad findings if anyone's interested: essentially just that Windows Update hadn't found any drivers, and we'd not been able to find any drivers posted at http://catalog.update.microsoft.com, nor other important resources for development and distribution.
dharmapunk said:
Hi gang-
I work for Plugable, not trying to advertise, but just want to share some news.
Then information we're quoted in above turned out to be wrong.
We've updated the post referenced above,
We've also added a follow up where we explain how to install a driver on a Windows RT device. Here's the new post.
We're very sorry about providing the misleading information, but we'll be working hard towards being open about news and developments.
I'm game to explain how we arrived at the bad findings if anyone's interested: essentially just that Windows Update hadn't found any drivers, and we'd not been able to find any drivers posted at http://catalog.update.microsoft.com, nor other important resources for development and distribution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any ETA (possibility?) of RT drivers for your USB video adapters? Oh, and just bought that Ethernet adapter, thanks for letting us know!
Actually, it does work. You just have to sign the apps with the Microsoft code integrity key. This may give the impression that you can't do it at all, but that's not actually true.
Obviously, this isn't possible for a third-party developer to apply such a signature directly, and MS is generally not fond of signing third-party code. It happens on occasion, though. Consider the Flash Player in IE10 for RT; that's Adobe code, but it's signed with the MS key. Downloading suitably signed EXEs and running them works just fine; for example, the remote debugging server for Windows RT is distributed by MS exactly like any other downloadable EXE, and it works.
In fact, if you somehow manage to put your device in Testsigning mode (which exists in RT and also in x86 versions of Windows, and allows using any trusted signature instead of only the MS signature), you can install your own signing certificate and then run your own compiled and signed desktop apps. Unfortunately, testsigning mode is a bootloader option, and the bootloader for all currently released Windows RT devices prohibits its use (although development devices were found to support it).
@dharmapunk: Any chance this driver is going to show up in Windows Update soon? Since you've obviously already gotten the MS signature, hopefully it will be literally plug-and-play soon...
GoodDayToDie said:
@dharmapunk: Any chance this driver is going to show up in Windows Update soon? Since you've obviously already gotten the MS signature, hopefully it will be literally plug-and-play soon...
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@GoodDayToDie Sorry, I'm not entirely sure on this- since it's an ASIX developed driver the info I have here is second hand. We anticipated this would be baked into RT's RTM, however for some unknown reason it wasn't.
Sorry I can't be more help here, I'm still looking for ANY WinRT drivers over on catalog.update.microsoft.com.
---------- Post added at 06:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:00 AM ----------
addictivepixels said:
Any ETA (possibility?) of RT drivers for your USB video adapters? Oh, and just bought that Ethernet adapter, thanks for letting us know!
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Click to collapse
Sorry @addictivepixels, I've not heard any news that DisplayLink is close to releasing, or even working on, a WinRT usb graphics driver. I anticipate that will stay only x86/x64 for quite some time. Wish I had better news...
The saga continues...
Hi again-
The saga continues. We’ve been asked to take down the WinRT driver for our ASIX-based USB Ethernet adapter. Seems like it wasn’t supposed to have been released after all, so we’re taking the driver off our website soon- before month's end.
We’ll still be selling the adapter. We’ll still be supporting customers. We’re even keeping the installation instructions that we wrote up on our website.
I hope that this issue can be resolved soon. I want more devices to plug into Surface too!
Since I'm a noob I can't post a link to our new post, however the one the OP listed now has an update notice with a link to further details.
dharmapunk said:
Hi again-
The saga continues. We’ve been asked to take down the WinRT driver for our ASIX-based USB Ethernet adapter. Seems like it wasn’t supposed to have been released after all, so we’re taking the driver off our website soon- before month's end.
We’ll still be selling the adapter. We’ll still be supporting customers. We’re even keeping the installation instructions that we wrote up on our website.
I hope that this issue can be resolved soon. I want more devices to plug into Surface too!
Since I'm a noob I can't post a link to our new post, however the one the OP listed now has an update notice with a link to further details.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there any chance that we could get the source to said driver? I'd like to poke around it to see if it has any vulnerabilities that'd allow a kernel-mode exploit.
I understand if you can't/don't want to post it.
netham45 said:
Is there any chance that we could get the source to said driver? I'd like to poke around it to see if it has any vulnerabilities that'd allow a kernel-mode exploit.
I understand if you can't/don't want to post it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@netham Other than the driver package in the link in the original post, we haven nothing else to offer. Since I knew our blog post with the driver download was quoted in the original post in this thread, we wanted to warn any customers who might have purchased our USB2-E100 that the driver will be going away soon due to a takedown request.
To be clear, our concern is making certain any customers who purchased the USB2-E100 for use on Windows RT have a chance to download the driver before we take it down.
I'd post the link to our new blog post with details if I could, trying again: http://plugable.com/2012/12/11/windows-rt-surface-usb-ethernet-takedown
The RT driver situation has been odd to say the least - still trying to figure it all out. I've been able to yank some drivers out of my Windows 8 Pro box and manually install them onto the Surface. Outcomes:
I was able to get my Smart Card Reader half functional this way, although there is no current affordance for installing the necessary minidriver that allows the .NET card to fully interoperate with the Surface.
I had the same minidriver issue with my DisplayLink UV+.
I was also able to get my Lumia 900 to mount , but can't get the file system to read past the top level.
More research required...
That is... *very* interesting. Those must be .NET user-mode drivers, because the Surface RT uses the ARM instruction set and is completely incapable of running the typical written-in-C/C++-and-compiled-for-x86/x64 drivers used on "normal" Windows.
Alternatively, the driver may contain a firmware blob that is loaded into the microcontroller of the hardware even though the actual Windows driver code (which would be x86) wouldn't work. The firmware blob won't be x86, it'll be whatever instruction set the device's microcontroller executes.
Don't ever buy Windows RT again, it's a dead end operating system.
well, at a very low price,it's a good device. Kids like them for games and music. Youtube etc . play well on it . Not totally useless but I would of never paid the full price for it.
AS OF 11/02/2012 THERE IS NOTHING ON THIS YET. THIS IS JUST TO TALK ABOUT IT.
Well this topic has bound to come up as soon as it was announced Running Windows RT on Android devices.
What boundaries are there?
Limitations?
The first thing that comes to mind (obvious but....) are drivers. Can someone confirm that Windows RT supports mobile radios?
Yup, its supports mobile radios.....
Something related would be WP8 drivers on WRT...........
whats keeping us from just pulling the software and burning it as a bin to a usb drive then booting it on an android
Hi guys!
As you, I'm trying to port Windows RT to Android.
There are good possibilities, but I haven't got a ISO of Windows RT and a Android tablet .
I hope to find a iso as soon as possible.
Ciao, Marocco2
Marocco2 said:
Hi guys!
As you, I'm trying to port Windows RT to Android.
There are good possibilities, but I haven't got a ISO of Windows RT and a Android tablet .
I hope to find a iso as soon as possible.
Ciao, Marocco2
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Click to collapse
Hey, what are you talking about?? Windows RT isn't in ISO form. because it is a flashable OS, it's not like Windows 8 or any other desktop OS, but like Windows Phone or Windows Mobile. Maybe flashing WinRT to system with Linux can be possible later, but not now.
Hi Folks.
With both a Zune HD and WP7 devices not supported via USB conenction to a Surface RT, I was thinking there had to be a way to tweak/re-write the ZuneHD / Zune driver files to allow them to be installed on the Surface RT...The ZuneHD is an ARM based device running Windows Embedded - and RT is an evolution of Windows CE you might say.
If so, the earlier regedit hack to allow the WP7 (or ZuneHD) to connect as a USB mass storage device would hopefully be possible, without the full ARM recompile of the Zune software (a near impossible task).
It's ridiculous that pre WP8 devices cannot even be connected via USB to facilitate file transfers "non-cloud" way.....
I tried manually updating drivers on the Surface RT with my ZuneHD connected - pointing at the Zune 4.7 drivers, and it confirmed that they were not ARM compatible.
Cheers,
Sheeds.
...
"tweak/re-write" an x86 kernel-mode driver into an ARM kernel mode driver for installation on a platform that doesn't (currently) permit unsigned drivers at all? You act like you have some idea what an instruction set architecture is, but you say this. If I ran this entire message through a translator to Finnish and then ROT-13'd it, you'd probably have a better chance of understanding the post than of managing to get the existing x86 Zune driver working on RT without a full re-write plus an additional hack to bypass driver signing. The Zune driver isn't exactly open-source... binary emulation *might* work at some point, but it's not practical for a kernel-mode driver (signature checks or not).
There is not, and never was, a hack to allow Zune-like devices to connect using UMS. The hack you're referring to merely un-hid the MTPZ (Media Transfer Protocol, Zune) devices from Windows Explorer. MTP(Z or not) and UMS are not at all the same thing, although they can sometimes be used for some of the same purposes.
We'd have a much better chance of getting Zune to run on RT, actually. That's "just" a matter of emulating an x64 machine for it to run on and passing its system calls through to the real OS and back again. Won't do any good for this use case without the driver, of course.
What does it matter that RT and CE run on the same ISA? The driver that we need is x86/x64 only.
There is basically nothing in common between CE and NT, aside from the fact that they're both portable operating systems from Microsoft and both implement some large portion of the Win32 API. Claiming that "RT is an evolution of Windows CE" is laughably wrong. They probably have less in common than Windows 95 (9x kernel, partially based on Win16 code) and Windows 8 (NT kernel, completely different project that contains no portions of DOS/Win16 except the re-implementation of the shell in NTVDM) - at least Win8 can run (many) Win95 apps. CE is at least as different from each of those as they are from eachother.
At this point, I'd guess that the most practical way to connect Zune on Windows RT would be the following:
a) Use a full x86-machine emulator (Bochs or QEMU, for example).
b) Use one that does JIT and/or dynamic recompilation, so the performance isn't abysmal (not sure what qualifies here...)
c) Install XP on it (no point targeting something newer).
d) Install Zune on the emulated XP.
e) Forward the tablet's USB port to the emulated machine's USB port (not sure if anybody has the ability to do this... currently, we can't even get networking in the emulated machine).
Good luck with that! I actually mean that quite seriously, I have a WP7 device myself and it annoys me that my Surface and it can't communicate except over Bluetooth (and I had to hack the phone to get that much).
GoodDayToDie said:
...
"tweak/re-write" an x86 kernel-mode driver into an ARM kernel mode driver for installation on a platform that doesn't (currently) permit unsigned drivers at all?QUOTE]
LOL - Thanks for the informative reply Luckily I have no delusions of grandeur over the fact that I am A) not a Developer and B) can't code past "hello world"
I was coming from the angle of the old registry hack for WP7 which allowed your phone to work as a USB mass storage file by a simple change via regedit to one of the registry strings associated to the Zune Driver....Certainly ignorant of the finer (and even the coarser) detail of your reply...so thanks for the explanation.
I added a MS Answers post asking why Microsoft cannot provide USB device connection for legacy WP7 and ZuneHD units with Windows RT. Be interesting to see what they or their MVP's reply to this, if at all.
Cheers.
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Yeah.. asking MS to support the devices is definitely the best approach. We might manage to make a user-mode connection to them using some third-party software talking directly to the USB port on sufficiently hacked RT devices, but that's about the best we'll get.
Also, I really with people would stop calling it a "USB Mass Storage" hack. I've posted to that effect in the relevant forums that I can find, too. This is not now, never was, and (short of custom ROMs or special bootloader modes) never will be a UMS interface to Zune-like devices. The device literally doesn't support it. Please don't confuse Media Transfer Protocol for USB Mass Storage. They are *not* the same. For example, those nicely named music files you see when using the "UMS" hack for WP7/Zune? *THEY DO NOT EXIST* anywhere on the device's filesystem. True, there are files containing the same binary data, but they have names like "2D.mp3" and are stored in a filesystem structure designed to make referencing them in a database faster. MTP exposes a hierarchical storage system (which may, coincidentally, mirror the filesystem although it does not do so on Zune-like devices), but it does *NOT* expose the filesystem/storage (which is what UMS does).
Hi all !
I have Windows RT transformer (Asus TF600T) and, it seems, also have a lot of problem with periphery hardware - printer & scanner. In Win RT support list I didn't find my printer & scanner. Does it mean, that I will never be able to make them work with my ASUS transformer & Win RT? Is there any possibility to work around this limitation? I've been trying to install Win7 drivers for my printer, showing system .inf file, or choosing "install" option by clicking right button on .inf file. It didn't help, unfortunatelly May be it will be possible to install Win7 drivers of my printer on Win RT with usage of Bochs. x86 Emulator or utilize some kind of web remote control of the printer? may be there is some kind of Win RT universal printer drivers, that makes work all models, but, for example, exclude some special functions of printnig?
strangely
Everybody is lucky and has no problem with periphery (printer & scanner) and its drivers in Windows RT ?