This book is a good introduction to and overview of Windows CE and its history. The book won't teach you to program on CE or adapt it to new hardware, but it will introduce you to the larger picture. CE will be very important in the next few years and is already being incorporated in an amazing number of devices.
The title is misleading -- the book is more at the level of the Microsoft Press "Understanding" series rather than at that of "Inside COM" or "Inside Windows NT". While it does discuss the architecture of CE, it is not nearly as in depth as "Inside Windows NT" (even the somewhat fuzzy first edition) and suffers by comparison. Perhaps one day Microsoft will give us the CE equivalent; meantime, you will have to be satisfied and move on to "Programming Windows CE" or the corresponding "Dummies" book (which is actually quite good).
"Inside Windows CE" is very readable and won't take you long to finish. It provides an interesting insight into the history of CE and Microsoft's earlier efforts in the area. It may not inspire total confidence in CE for some, on the other hand, given it suggests the kernel was originally hacked up in a few weeks by a couple of developers working in secret because of the lack of support they were getting from the group creating the official embedded OS. The story of how Microsoft really operates internally -- often through several competing efforts and always doggedly persisting until something finally works -- is very enlightening.
Anyone planning to program for CE should read this book, but you will be left wanting to know more details of its architecture and also needing another book about programming Win32 on CE.
