With any modern management system why would you ever go to the client, 99% of it is done remotely. I manage 10,000 desktops in 100 locations globally without leaving my desk using Altiris, SCCM or LANDESK type system. Service packs, patches, etc no issue all done with check boxes and occasional notification emails and a little bit of local testing/ limited production testing. You still need a hard disk on most VDI clients, ram is dirt cheap. OS upgrades are almost a non issue as well. We can deploy a desktop in 40 different languages in about an hour. We tried to look at VDI and with our good management system we currently have in place we could see zero cost savings if anything in some ways they would go up. In most companies 50% or more of your users are on laptops travel heavily and we KNOW internet connections suck in most of their locations VDI makes sense in some places but not most. The only places we could somewhat justify it were in our plants and kiosks. For everywhere else there is a good systems management software. It has its place but everytime we talk to someone about VDI we get the secret little nod that it wouldnt save us money. If you dont have a good management system it may help your business immensely but if you do its really really hard to find that cost savings they promise.

Exactly everyone keeps forgetting it a full XP VM, your going to need AV and client management suites on it at a minimum which have a cost associated not to mention the extra manpower etc of maintaining the essentially several hundred more PCs. We are probably going a hybrid citrix and software virtualization route as we have found a few web apps that dont seem to want to run even on a virtual ie6 but others that seem to work fine.

Yet in the US this happens all the time. People are forced to be in unions they dont want to be in and pay extremely high dues and receive nothing in return. My wife was forced at two different jobs to join the Union at one she made 9 dollars an hour the other 12. After dues taxes healthcare etc she made less than minimum wage and when she did need the Union due to a crappy boss they didnt do crap to help her. The unions in the US only exist now to serve themselves they once had their time but now many are openly rebelling against them as their demands are part of why all the jobs are leaving for china, mexico, and others.

I thought only windows got exploited this way.... oh thats right All OS's do.

Depends on your shop and requirements. I had 200+ PCs and Macs. 6 Physical servers several more virtual, 2 AD domains, used altiris for most of the PC management and imaging and we did it with 2 part time people. In our case it was an education environment and 160 of the machines were lab machines so they were essentially identical.

More fixed Corporate Intranets with old applications that are no longer being updated and no money to replace keep IE6 alive

I understand where your coming from but I figure thats probably less than a quarter of users of these products or doing it to run game. I just run a second windows partition for that so I get the full performance.

I havent tried it since 3. I will be looking at it when I build a new server here in a couple weeks. Thanks

Cool Thanks I will have to look into that on the VM server Im getting ready to build.

Now thats a good trick. I did not know that and yes it appears to work great. Thanks

yes but just because it has server in the name doesnt mean it doesnt work just fine on a desktop machine.

as im sure you know ESXi has very strict hardware requirements and I could be wrong but I believe you still need the VMware infrastructure server for it to work correctly right?

I guess it depends on how you use it. For my purposes it is the entire point of my system. Im usually trying to cram a minimum of 16 VMs on each one and it does just fine for what I need it to do.

I agree and that was my point. IF cost is an issue it should be included. If your just looking for the best product it shouldnt even be mentioned. We use the free VMware server in our patch test environment as its a free and it performs pretty well. I have some complaints about the UI as the guy does above but its functional 95% of the time with limited headache. Production side we use ESX but the costs of that just didnt make sense for a test environment for workstation patches.

If cost is an issue why do these reviews forget the free VMWare Server it does most everything most users would need at no cost vs workstation