I believe App-V has much more development behind it and to be honest I haven’t seen much ThinApp in the wild anymore. I still prefer App-V 5 because of its large community and ability to handle more application scenarios, but depending on the needs maybe you do want ThinApp to deliver the application. App-V 5 is a slower install than App-V 4 because of changes to the architecture on the client side where it uses a redirection method for registry and file calls that don’t rely on a proprietary file system and registry.

ThinApp also does not need to be installed as the package can run just in time off a network share so in the world of VDI this can be a plus. ThinApp is highly portable with the client embedded inside the package, but that does sacrifice some application compatibility since isolation introduces its own set of issues especially when you have several applications that work together. Execution from USB key with portable profiles/user settings. It works with AD, ESD enforcement tools, and open protocols so no additional hardware, software licenses and ongoing maintenance costs for backend infrastructure is required. App-V isn’t in every Windows SKU so that can be important depending on your end user needs this can still be a consideration. VMware ThinApp does not require any distribution, streaming, or activation servers or agents.

Thinapp portable