[2] Microsoft long knew of the importance and potential of mobile computers, and in the 1990s had made previous attempts to capture the market.

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, 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.

[3] 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 kernel.

With these devices, Microsoft had only ten percent of the personal digital assistant (PDA) market share, whereas its rival, Palm, Inc., had over half of it.

[9] The top of the screen is filled by a navigation bar, which on the left side contains a button that opens the Start menu and on the right the current time.

[11] New to Microsoft's line of PDAs is tapping and holding on items to open context menus, analogous to right-clicking on a desktop computer.

[18] The capabilities of the hardware devices running Pocket PC made the operating system suitable for multimedia and playing Windows CE games.

[20] Voice Recorder is used to capture sound via the device's microphone, which is then saved in the WAV format, and can be played back here.

[21] 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.

[25] The infrared port is used to transfer data between PCs or other Pocket PC devices at a maximum speed of 115.2 kbps.

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.

[8] InfoWorld viewed the operating system as an excellent platform for application developers, especially those writing in C++, 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 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.