The following are some observations that I have made during preliminary tests.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer, this does not represent a exhaustive or planned QA for the environment but rather an attempt to 'jump in' and get some first impressions of the user experience for routine tasks. Second disclaimer, I have been running a Citrix proof-of-concept for the Medical School for a couple years. I have attempted to limit any bias in my testing/observations and strongly recommend that they are independently confirmed or denied.

Most tests were conducted from an older Windows XP machine (Dell Dimension e510) from a remote location with a high speed connection. All testing was completed via the respective web interface for each solution. Experiences on the Tufts network, using a newer computer, and/or by using their respective desktop clients may change the experience.

User Experience was at the forefront of my thoughts while I was working.

Observation	Description	Notes/Comments
System configurations vary	The virtual machines are not running with the equivalent configuration. (e.g. use of Aero restricted in the VMware virtual machines)	This may invalidate some of the observations that follow
Additional software is needed	Basics such as QuickTime player and Adobe Acrobat Reader are not installed. Additional software would enable better testing of real world use
At a basic level, both solutions are functional for standard tasks	Both systems were adequate for accessing a desktop remotely when discounting the full user experience. Neither were equivalent to running locally but (basic) work could be completed if required
Citrix client exposed additional features	Settings such as screen resolution, offloading Flash, etc... were exposed via the client	Screen resolution and other features are configurable via the VMware client, the HTML interface isn't designed for feature parity.
VMware solution has substantially more artifacts around text	Subtle but slightly annoying artifacts are more pronounced in the VMware solution, more noticable during refresh events such as mousing over a tab in Firefox	This will potentially be missed by some people but really annoy others
Sound quality is 'ok' when streaming tthrough Citrix	Streaming music works but was at a noticeably lower quality that I what I would expect.
VMware solution did not allow audio streaming via HTML	Unable to stream audio locally via the VMware Desktop	Audio works fine with the VMware Client
VMware HTML has a substantial lag between typing and display of text	The VMware solution had a substantial level of lag between when text was entered and when the updates appeared on the screen. The Citrix solution had some barely noticeable lag but was nearly real time	There should be no noticable delay when using the VMware View client.
Unable to enter full screen mode via VMware solution	Unable to get to a full screen view of the desktop	Possible with the VMware View client
Access to local resource with Citrix	Citrix appears to allow access to the local hard drive. I am not certain if the same functionality exists in the VMware solution.	It is good that this feature can be set to disabled by default. The interaction of certain software running on the virtual machines and local files needs to be fully understood prior to implementation (e.g. antivirus scan and potentially report false positives where the infection is local to the user, not the virtual machine?).
Issues PDFs in VMware solution Internet Explorer	Opening http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf directly from Internet Explorer in the VMware solution caused the system to hang then eventually respond. Opening it in Internet Explorer in the Citrix solution worked fine.	Possible issue with different desktop images, management model, or my installation of Acrobat Reader. Snap 2013-10-30 at 13.29.15.png
PDFs looked different	PDFs appeared to be of different quality in each solution.	This should be explored
System resources vary	Virtual machines are not running with the equivalent amount of resources (e.g. 2GB vs 4GB RAM)	This may invalidate some of the observations that follow

Hopefully, the following images contain enough detail to represent what I was observing.

Sample of artifacts (VMware on the left and Citrix on the right)

The Remote Desktop Connection provides the best example. Zoom to see detail.

Artifacts in Wordpad

The image on the right is Wordpad running locally on my computer.

VMware	Citrix

Menu Options
A sample of the menu options that are exposed.

VMware	Citrix

Citrix asking for access to local files

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