News

Microsoft Issues RC of User Experience Virtualization Tool

• By Kurt Mackie
• September 14, 2012

The test version of Microsoft's User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) tool was made available as a release candidate (RC) last week.

Microsoft most recently released UE-V, which permits a user's desktop personalization customizations to roam across various Windows-based devices, as a second beta in June.

Users of beta 2 can perform an in-place upgrade to the RC, according to a blog post by Stephen L. Rose, a Windows product manager at Microsoft.

UE-V is part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), which is a suite of about six tools for enterprise IT pros. Organizations typically acquire the MDOP suite as an extra cost on top of Microsoft's Software Assurance licensing. Microsoft is planning to release the next version of the suite, "MDOP 2012," in the fourth quarter of this year, which is when UE-V will be ready for production environments, according to a blog post by Karri Alexion-Tiernan, director of product management for desktop virtualization.

The new RC release of UE-V includes some improvements based on customer feedback. There's a new group policy to enable or disable UE-V for individual users. Microsoft also added a couple of new PowerShell commandlets to that end. Another improvement in the RC is its ability to work on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 operating systems.

The RC of UE-V can be downloaded at the Microsoft Connect portal page here after filling out a sign-up form.