I have a couple questions for the group concerning product choice for an upgrade. Thanks in advance for any help.
One of the product installs I'm responsible for currently uses InstallShield MultiPlatform 5. I'd like to move this to the current product and I'm trying to decide between going to InstallShield or InstallAnywhere.
We previously required non-Windows support but it is no longer officially supported. In a perfect world, I think we'd like to retain the option of (somewhat) easily adding non-Windows support back in the future. Honestly, I'd say it's unlikely we would need it though.
So my questions: Are there significant differences in the two products other than multi-platform support such that using InstallShield would get me some benefits that would outweigh the loss of non-Windows support? One negative of using the old InstallShield MP that we have is that the install packages are huge compared to Windows-only installs. Is there still a significant size difference between the two products?
Thanks, any suggestions or opinions are greatly appreciated.
As they were made by to different companies, yes there are, and most of them relate to Windows: I guess that building the same installer for Windows with both IS and IA would yield a completely different result. So I suggest you try out the evaluation versions and see what suits you best (i.e. if you want not to rule out a different platform support or if you want to go only with Windows and advise later) (I guess the pricing might also be an issue, especially if you purchase a maintenance and support contract, too).
I use both InstallShield and IA and there are some major differences between the two products. If you don't think you are going to deliver installers that are Unix or Linux I would make the move to InstallShield. InstallShield has a lot more functionality (through IDE) for it's windows installers then IA does for Windows. As pv said you should probably try the evaluations and see if you like the IDE and it performs as you wish.
Offtopic: As I'm tired of being called pv, I've created a signature with my real name (I'm the Vlad from the old community.zerog.com forums). I would have created the same login here but either it was taken or it was underneath the minimum character length (I don't remember exactly).
I just want to say 'Thanks' to you because whenever I met with problems when using InstallAnywhere, I searched for the old zerog forum for help, and your replys help me so much.
