Comments on The Half-Blood Programmer: Product Review: InstallShield 2008

We must believe a fact that all products have adva...

2010-05-14T07:59:41.442+08:00

We must believe a fact that all products have advantages and disadvantages. So I turn to use more open source products, such as Inno Setup. Why? Simply because if there is a disadvantage I have access to its source code and I can try to change it. Well, definitely it requires you to master the code base, but as geeks we are kind of doomed right? :)

I use InstallAware and while it does everything th...

2010-05-14T00:18:13.252+08:00

I use InstallAware and while it does everything that I need it do, the complaints posted by the other users are valid. You can not remove the branding, their support is the most unprofessional that I have ever seen, and it costs way too much for team development. I normally post my name to blog comments, but given how InstallAware cuts off support to anyone that complains, I need to hide my identity.

Thank you for this blog. I used to code in Java, ...

2009-09-26T05:15:05.498+08:00

Thank you for this blog. I used to code in Java, and am now programming in C++. You have very simple and wise words. You appear fair and objective. God bless.

Peace

I second percy on the money making charge. Their s...

2009-07-08T18:47:28.835+08:00

I second percy on the money making charge. Their support is non-existent, their charges atrocious (stay with them for a while to understand what I mean) and to add to the pain, their branding is all over products you create. You would think you can custom brand your installer after all the cash you parted with... Think again.

Hi Piercy, don't complain. You obviously have othe...

2008-11-22T13:36:00.000+08:00

Hi Piercy, don't complain. You obviously have other choices at hand :)

DO NOT PURCHASE INSTALLAWARE.

i cannot ...

2008-11-19T18:28:00.000+08:00

DO NOT PURCHASE INSTALLAWARE.

i cannot stress this enough. They are money stealing pirates.

They wont provided installers for version you have paid for. they will then issue a required auto update which installs the newest version. this new version needs a new code which you have to buy. you cannot go back because they dont provide the installers. so basically pay again or dont use it.

there support is rubbish they do not respond to complaints, issues or queries.

I have never dealt with such an unprofessional company.

Avoid at all costs.

We switched to IA from IS around two years ago. Ou...

2008-10-24T13:20:00.000+08:00

We switched to IA from IS around two years ago. Our biggest issue was that the installer created from IS ballooned to well over 100Mb. This was not acceptable for a product that is distributed solely via download. It also has a detrimental effect on trial downloads and therefore also affects the number of sales.

Today our installers are under 50mb even though there is more stuff crammed in.

Importantly, IA just seems to be easier to use overall, which means less time to create more reliable installers.

Cheers,

K

The scrolling EULA is a very useful feature to sat...

2007-10-09T04:40:00.000+08:00

The scrolling EULA is a very useful feature to satisfy corporate legal and product management requirements. It's not their for the users benefit. It's there for the developers benefit should it be required.

Also VS integration is really nice. It makes building with VSTS TFS a breeze and if you don't like working inside the VS IDE you don't have to. You can check out the ISM and open it up externally without hurting the .SLN and .ISPROJ files.