In these days we hear a lot about Desktop Virtualization and Application Virtualization. Last week-end someone asked me what I was currently doing and I told him that beside my normal day job, I am doing a number of Citrix trainings. Now let me mention that this person is just a regular user who doesn’t know anything about managing an Enterprise IT infrastructure, leave alone he would understand what Virtualization technology is about. Heck… how to explain Application Virtualization, Streaming, VDI to an ordinary mortal?
Well here we go, Citrix has a Test Drive for Citrix XenApp, you can access it through http://citrixcloud.net/. Just click on one of the Devices and register for a demo account, once submitted you will receive almost instantly a demo account and URL to connect to the Citrix XenApp Demo.
Once you have installed the Citrix Plug-in you’re ready to launch the Demo.
When launching Microsoft Word for the first time it took approx. 42 seconds to start it. Once started, i left Word open and launched Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Power Point, both started within approximately 5 seconds. I then closed all the Applications again and launched Excel, that took just 25 seconds to start. I left it open and launched Powerpoint and Word again, both opened within 5-10 seconds.
Below a screenshot from Power Point. It integrates seamlessly, you actually wouldn’t notice that the application isn’t executed locally.
if you haven’t seen XenApp in action, I definitely recommend you give this a try.
Just took a look on CodePlex to see if there’s any new interesting projects and came across the Windows4all.com project. Windows4all.com is a silverlight based website simulating an operating system inside your web browser.
By the way, if you’re interested in these type of solutions, there’s also Wiki-OS or continue reading the WEB OS article on Mashable.
It’s been in May this year that i first wrote about Microsoft Live Mesh, later in July I was able to get it installed and since then i have been using it on a regular basis.
Not that there is anything new in remote controlling a PC and sharing documents, but it is the simplicity how it is done and how it can be used.
Once you have added your clients to live mesh, you can remotely access them from anywhere where you have Internet access and the necessary permissions to install an ActiveX control. Note that you can also access your mesh clients from a PC that is not part of your mesh network, you just need to logon on mesh.com
All clients that are part of your mesh network have the Live Mesh Agent installed, this then adds an additional tray icon to your windows taskbar which allow you to directly access any live mesh devices, folders and the desktop.
Performance is quite ok and allows reasonable remote working, but i recommend to configure the Windows Vista Desktop to Vista Basic or Windows Basic, this will prevent the annoying screen painting effect.
Another great feature is the Live Mesh Desktop. Here you can create folders that if needed can be replicated across all your clients that are part of your mesh network. I personally use this feature often to simply move a file from one client to another, or I drop a document in there I want to continue reading on my home PC.
At present a limited tech preview is also available for Mac clients and the CTP for Mobile devices has just been expanded as well. In general I am rather sceptic about the whole Cloud hype, but Live Mesh is definitely a cool innovation that we will most likely will hear and see more about in the near future.
