# What is a "Citrix Environment"?  IT guys installed it on our computers, but didn't explain it.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-citrix-environment-it-guys-installed-it-on-our-computers-but-didnt-explain-it/511363>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 24, 2009, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-citrix-environment-it-guys-installed-it-on-our-computers-but-didnt-explain-it/511363 "2009-09-24T12:44:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![UncleFred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f0a364/32.png) [@UncleFred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleFred)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2009, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-citrix-environment-it-guys-installed-it-on-our-computers-but-didnt-explain-it/511363/21 "2009-09-30T01:54:12Z")

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Before our smaller company got gobbled up by a much bigger company, we had a Citrix environment also. I felt it didn’t work very well. The problem was when I took my laptop on the road to visit customers, and didn’t have an internet connection, I had a terrible time keeping track of what files were actually on my laptop (and accessible) and which were really back on the server - and that I couldn’t get at.

Honestly I think it was more a problem with how our IT people setup Citix, rather than anything wrong with Citrix itself.

Now that we are part of a much bigger company, we don’t use Citrix. All our common applications like MS Office are ‘pushed’ out by the IT people. We are still somewhat free to install our own (appropriate) applications as needed.

This system works pretty well except every now and then a ‘push’ update will screw up something, like over-write local settings I’ve created.

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**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2009, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-citrix-environment-it-guys-installed-it-on-our-computers-but-didnt-explain-it/511363/22 "2009-09-30T04:01:36Z")

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Just checking in to say that to the extent I can follow the conversation, it’s very informative - thanks for your comments, everyone.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2009, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-a-citrix-environment-it-guys-installed-it-on-our-computers-but-didnt-explain-it/511363/23 "2009-09-30T04:10:28Z")

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> [@BigT](#):
>
> Two people cannot use Remote Desktop concurrently, without a serious [hack](http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop). The local person essentially gets logged out while the remote session is occurring.

Then what I am thinking of is actually a different product, Microsoft Terminal Services? Whatever it is, fifteen or forty different people can simultaneously log in and each of them get their OWN separate session.

I vaguely recall that you have to pay in chunks for various tiers of how many concurrent connnections you get to have.

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