So last week I took a quick trip to Magnetic Island off Townsville for a test drive of the IT Survivor challenge we're running with VMware, where one reader will get to spend 6 nights staying on the tropical island while testing out the capabilities of Horizon 6. This is what I learned from the experience -- lessons you can use even if you're not lounging around enjoying an ocean view.

Alright you've already seen the bath at the Grand Mercure Apartments on Magnetic Island where I stayed for my preview of the IT Survivor challenge. Now it's time to check out the overall accommodation.

It's the end of the week and it's time to relax. In the IT Survivor context, that can only mean one thing: using my virtual desktop in the bath.

Sure, I'm on Magnetic Island to demonstrate how to work remotely using VMware Horizon 6, but it would be foolish not to take advantage of the location as well. And what better way to do that than with a brisk 5km walk?

Thanks to reader Daniel for pointing out a really obvious way to enhance my experience of running Windows 7 on a Chromebook via VMware Horizon View: using Chrome's full-screen presentation view to get rid of the ChromeOS toolbar.

It's one thing for a virtual desktop like VMware Horizon to handle a relatively low-powered application like Word. What happens with something that's more graphically intensive and needs more data -- like Google Earth? As part of our IT Survivor challenge, I decided to find out.

So I can see the ocean from my window and I want to go for a long bushwalk to explore Magnetic Island, but I am supposed to be testing out how easily our IT Survivor competition winner can work remotely. The central technology involved there is VMware's Horizon 6 virtual desktop. This is how I'm using it.

So I've reached Magnetic Island for our IT Survivor challenge and the technology is working well so far. With one exception: Google Maps.

Our awesome IT Survivor competition will let one lucky reader enjoy 6 nights on Magnetic Island, thanks to VMware. To see how that works in practice, I'm travelling to Magnetic Island to preview the experience and see if I can get my regular job done using nothing but VMware Horizon 6.