Summary

Client virtualization has two focus areas: application compatibility and IT professional usage. Application compatibility is a major focus for Windows 7 deployment; and for home users and small businesses, XP Mode with Windows Virtual PC can be a great short-term solution. For the enterprise, MED-V is a good option, providing additional manageability and automatic URL redirection for configured URLs to the Internet Explorer running inside the MED-V virtual machine. Windows 8 switches focus to virtualization for the IT professional and delivers the Hyper-V experience almost entirely feature-complete on the desktop.