Other applications with shell integration might suffer from reduced functionality, for example an application that integrates its own menus into Windows Explorer. The downside is that there are simply applications that Thinapp cannot virtualize – examples include Antivirus software, firewalls and device drivers. Need to run multiple applications with different versions of Java Runtime Environment? Not a problem! Probably the greatest benefit of application virtualization is conflict free application delivery. The fact that applications can be configured before deployment is another great benefit from a standard installation.

Obviously isolating applications from the OS has security benefits, especially when something like a virus or malware is confined to a sandbox. This independence from the host OS has many benefits and a few drawbacks (depending on how you look at things).

In basic terms Thinapp abstracts the file system and registry of a given application into a single executable file – decoupling it from the host Operating System (OS). VMware Thinapp is a suite of components that work together to virtualize applications.

Thinstall virtualization