review

A hands-on review of Xen Desktop 4

I got my first chance to play with Xen Desktop 4 and by association the new version of Xen App that it ships with.

So first off I think we can all agree that it wouldn’t be a Citrix release without a Nomenclature change. The new citrix client is out(11.2) and now called the Citrix Online Plug-In. The Access Management Console has been renamed to the Delivery Services Console for both Xen Desktop and Xen App. The web interface functionality which used to be it’s own console and then was amalgamated into the Access Management Console has now been separated back into it’s own console again. To my understanding they split their assets 50/50 and Web interface has supervised visitation rights to the kids.

Ok, so now the good. Lots of improvements on the Virtual Desktop Agent with lots more multimedia support and USB support. There seems to be more functionality built in to make the user experience more seamless and enjoyable which is good because if there is nothing in the world that will kill desktop virtualization faster then unhappy users.

When I was publishing an application in Xen App that has been installed on the Xen App server there was a handy check box to setup an Isolation Enviroment which to my remembrance not there before.

Overall I would say good improvements so far, I am sure I barely scratched the surface on changes but I only started using it today so I will post more changes as a notice them.

Passed 1y0-a14!

I wrote and passed the Xen Desktop 3.0 (1Y0-A14) yesterday with a 98%!  Overall this was a straight forward exam, no big tricks. There were a few questions where you were told the task that you needed to preform and they listed all the steps to do it and you needed to put those steps in the right order. All the other questions were very short and if you know your stuff then it shouldn’t be too hard an exam.

My advise would be to focus heavily on studying provisioning server because that played in big in the exam that I got.

Good luck!

Microsoft Security Essentials - a review

Here is a great review for the new Microsoft Security Essentials products:

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/30/…

In reading the review I was actually tentatively impressed ( I will save real positive feelings after i test it myself).

Microsoft unleashing a good product is rare enough but a good product that is free? I am pretty sure the planets must be aligning in just the right way for this to happen.

For those of you who are thinking to yourself “but HyperV is free” please note that in my previous statement I did say free AND good.

A review of Snow Leopard

The Register has posted a first review of the new Mac OS called Snow Leopard.

The review itself is pretty interesting though I am have personally yet to be overly impressed with any of the Mac operating systems.

If your a Mac fan you will likely be stoked, if not then it might be a mild curiosity.

Check it out here:

 http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/08/25/…