The Moth

Visual Studio.NET 2003 shipped with a WindowsCE 4.1 Emulator (as well as PPC 2002 emulator, of course). Although the PPC emulators where updated via separate SDK downloads, the WinCE emulator never was. It never got updated, so even today some devs fall into the trap of thinking it is a 4.2 emulator. For example, with the 4.1 emulator, trying to use the InputPanel control (SIP) results in crashing (NullReferenceException more often than not).

Of course, if you are going to be targeting a non-PPC device, you should obtain an SDK that includes an emulator from the provider of the custom CE-based device. Nevertheless, having a generic WinCE emulator out of the box is nice for those quick generic tests.

Whidbey will not ship with a CE 5.0 emulator (and hence none of the Beta or CTPs include one either). The plan, apparently, is to make a CE 5.0 image available after the release of VS2005. If you don't know about it yet, CF 2.0 will only run on CE 5.0 devices and greater (and PPC2003 and greater). I tried installing an SDK created with PlatformBuilder 5.0 but had no success (Beta 1 on Win2K, November CTP on XP) then found out via the private ng that it is not supported yet.

Only recently came across this; granted you can't straightforwardly debug with it and it doesn't work in a Virtual PC, but at least via copying files you can run NETCF 1.0 apps and also CF 2.0 apps (if you deploy the x86 Compact Framework 2.0 cab first)