Dissappointed with InstallShields AdminStudio 6.0

[SMunir]

I purchased AdminStudio 6 2 months ago and I now believe it was a big big mistake. I was using Installsield 6.3 prior to this and found that with a bit of work it could do almost everything.

AdminStudio 6.0 crashes practically everytime you try and do something new. It lacks in coherent help and training material (which i'm going through as I type) and I'm very very disappointed for what I've received for £2.5k. :mad:

I probably would have been better off creating an interface to the Windows Installer databases myself.

[Paul_M_]

I am very sad to hear that you are not satisfied with InstallShield AdminStudio. Seeing as you were coming from Pro 6.3 I would recommend checking out InstallShield X instead of AdminStudio. AdminStudio is really designed to be for the system engineer that is going to repackage legacy applications and do conflict solving and so forth. AdminStudio is not designed to be an installation authoring tool as this is one of the tools inside of the AdminStudio suite.

[SMunir]

Thanks for your response Paul. Unfortunately I've already bought AdminStudio 6.0 and am kinda stuck now. The information available through advertising gives one the impression that AdminStudio 6.0 includes Installshield X. However, little does the end user know that the included Installshield X is a watered down version that only includes MSI Windows Installer projects.

The 30 day money back guarantee is uselss with AdminStudio because it takes over a month to learn the various features of AdminStudio because no training material is included and you are expected to fork out yet more money to buy training material.

[Christopher_Pai]

That's simply not true. You just go into the Tools | Options and somewhere in there you will find the option to turn on InstallScript projects. The Editor that comes with AS 6.0 is the Editor from ISX. It supports Basic MSI, InstallShield MSI, and InstallScript ( legacy ) project types. It is lacking Multiplatform capabilities which at the time is not important to me.

However, if InstallShield is still reading this thread, my MAJOR complaint about AdminStudio is that while yes I do spend some time in the repackager to make my initial snapshot, I spend most of my time in Editor. I dispute the notion that AS is for SystemsAdministrators and not for authoring installs. I dont think basic SysAdmins should ever be repackaging in the first place.

Now for my MAJOR MAJOR complaint about AS 6.0:

I should not have to wait 6 months from now for a new relase of AS6.0 to include the current version of Editor that exists today. If Editor 11 gets released tomorrow I should have it for AdminStudio tomorrow.

[Jennifer_Watson]

It drives me crazy as well that we have to wait for updates to Editor for AdminStudio when it has already been updated twice now?

Where's the love?

[SMunir]

Thanks for letting me know about how to enable installscript projects. It's made my life alot easier. I agree with your gripe about not having the lates Editors for AdminStudio.

Christopher Painter wrote:
That's simply not true. You just go into the Tools | Options and somewhere in there you will find the option to turn on InstallScript projects. The Editor that comes with AS 6.0 is the Editor from ISX. It supports Basic MSI, InstallShield MSI, and InstallScript ( legacy ) project types. It is lacking Multiplatform capabilities which at the time is not important to me.

However, if InstallShield is still reading this thread, my MAJOR complaint about AdminStudio is that while yes I do spend some time in the repackager to make my initial snapshot, I spend most of my time in Editor. I dispute the notion that AS is for SystemsAdministrators and not for authoring installs. I dont think basic SysAdmins should ever be repackaging in the first place.

Now for my MAJOR MAJOR complaint about AS 6.0:

I should not have to wait 6 months from now for a new relase of AS6.0 to include the current version of Editor that exists today. If Editor 11 gets released tomorrow I should have it for AdminStudio tomorrow.

[Christopher_Pai]

Jennifer Watson wrote:
It drives me crazy as well that we have to wait for updates to Editor for AdminStudio when it has already been updated twice now?

Where's the love?

Hallelujah Admin Studio 6.0 VP1 was just released today - It includes 10.5! On a side note I hope InstallShield can commit to fast release turn arounds between IS 11 and AdminStudio 7.

http://www.installshield.com/downloads/isas/release_notes/isas_600_vp1.asp

Thankyou InstallShield!

[Jennifer_Watson]

Timing is everything. I finish training my company's 35 packagers on version 6 (sans sp1) tomorrow. Wrote a 225 page guide with our standards and labs and everything.

I guess I know what I am doing for the next week or so!!!

Happy, yes, but a little more warning would have been appreciated from my pals in Schaumburg...

Jenn

[singletd]

Hi

Reading this thread I agree with the comments made specifically by Christopher Painter.

Here is my whinge, I have AdminStudio 6 vp 1 installed as I perform repackaging etc for our companies IS dept, I also produce installations for customer deployment on multiple platforms.

The problem with AdminStudio is that you do not get the Universal Installer part, what about support for networks with Unix etc? Currently I am using Multi-platform 5.03 and AS6 on the machine okay but I want the Universal Installer for the new features it contains.

After speaking to Sales I was informed that I would have to buy the the Upgrade to 10.5 Premier edition from Multi-platform which will co-exist with AS6, okay but I already have 10.5 with AS6, I only want the Universal installer which I can no longer buy seperately.

So I thought I try installing the evaluation of Premier 10.5 with the Universal Installer on the same machine, uh oh..... Won't install because I have Admin Studio installed.

If I wan't to do both tasks, not only do I have to buy two products I also have to have two build computers, now thats sweet, try justifying that with your finance department.

DRS

[Christopher_Pai]

We don't use all of AS's capabilities. We find that we mainly use the repackager and occasionally tuner. Most of our time is in Editor. We haven't had Unix packages come our way yet, but I can see it coming. So far we are starting to look like we are going to run InstallShield 10.5 on our development/build box and to use repackager only in our test lab. Once you snapshot and build your ISM you don't really need repackager on your dev box.