Developers that own Visual Studio 2008 have access to a nice development tool: Microsoft Device Emulator 3.0.  This emulator, plus the Windows Mobile 6 SDK allows one to develop applications for the latest MS Mobile Operating System.  This includes application and installation development and testing.  Using the emulator reduces the hardware cost for small development shops.

One little known fact is that you can communicate with the emulator as though it is sitting in a cradle connected to the PC.  RAPI works well in this environment.  (Sweet!)

You can have two copies of VS 2008 running in debug mode.  One copy is debugging an app on the Smart Device, and the other copy is debugging a desktop application communicating with the Smart Device.  (Also Sweet!)

I've put together a screen shot to illustrate the emulator communicating with ActiveSync 4.5.  Notice that ActiveSync connects to the emulator using DMA instead of a COM port.

You may download a standalone version of the emulator here.

You may download ActiveSync 4.5 here.