Is it possible to write a windows based appliance?

Question

The open source community is producing tons of software appliances because they are able to distribute the OS, essentially for free. So you can quite easily download a virtual image of an application and have it running in minutes without the need to configure and setup. This is a great advantage for cutting down setup and configuration costs and for providing clients with demo software.

It's even better for appliances as oss based applications can easily adapt the OS to the limited resources of the embedded device while this is not possible of Windows, e.g. getting rid of the GUI interface, removing unnecessary code form the kernel, etc.

Can one do something similar with windows? If so, how?

Answer 1

Check out Windows Embedded; It does some of the things you mention (e.g. letting you tailor what is included, omitting the GUI, etc)