What does Microsoft’s end of lifecycle (WEC7 2021 resp WEC2013 2023) mean ?
Can Toradex selll boards with WEC beyond these dates ?
Microsoft will likely stop issuing updates for WEC7 and WEC2013 on the mentioned dates. It’s not related to the availability of licenses from Microsoft. They will continue selling them.
We at Toradex will continue maintaining these operating systems as long as we sell modules which have official WEC 7 or WEC 2013 support. As an example you can take WinCE 5.0 where Microsoft stopped its support in 2014. We still maintain WinCE 5.0 BSPs today! We sell modules with WEC 2013 licenses which allow our customers to also use older WinCE or WEC versions on our boards.
In the attached pdf of Advantech I found a End of License date, e.g for WEC7 2026/2/28
Do you know these dates ? Are they relevant to your products ?
Dear @Frax222
We are aware of these dates. Toradex has an agreement with Microsoft, so we can ship products with licenses that are valid for any WinCe version until 2028, with an option to even stretch this time for longer.
So these end-of-license dates don’t have any influence on our products or the way you can use them, until 2030 or even longer.
Regards, Andy
Hello Andy,
we now got a product notification saying that Apalis iMX6 with WinCE will be discontinued in 2027.
Your post in Jun 2018 did sound a little bit differently. I am a little bit astonished that Swiss Toradex cares about CRA.
Anyway: What do you recommend in case of RMA ? I assume modules will be shipped with Linux after 2027 and we can install (on our risk) WinCE - at least as long there is no hardware change on these modules which would require new drivers.
Kind regards
Franz
Dear @amota1,
As mentioned in the PCN there are two factors leading to the EL of the WinCE based products: the one is the deadline set by Microsoft WinCE license (May 2028).
The second is the CRA regulation, requiring compliance for all end-products sold into the European market (this is a new liability on our customers, and it is not about the origin of the SoM).
To your question regarding RMA: as stated in the PCN any RMAs are exempted from this regulation, since it is about a end-product already placed into the market, not about selling a new product. Toradex does recommend that you do make a LTB also including a safety stock for covering future RMA cases.
Best regards,
Collin