Is Premier (vs Pro) worth the extra bucks?

[RobertClark4777]

I've been developing applications for 25 years (as a one man shop) and have worked with a number of installers. The one that has given me the best, consistent results were the Installshield products. I've managed to do most of my work with the Express editions but my installations are becoming a bit more complicated. I'm very intrigued by the Try-And-Die feature in Premier. I could use some advice:

1) Are there any other reasons that a one man operation supporting, updating and building 20-30 applications, would want to consider the Premier edition over the Professional?

2) This is more of a technical issue. In the Express edition, my installs required a complete uninstall to update the product. Do the non-Express editions give me the flexibility to update applications without removing the previous versions?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Robert

[gridman]

I can give you some information. There are a few differences between the Pro and Premier additions.

The Premier version offers localization, so if you are doing international installations in multiple languages, you will need the premier version. In addition, the Premier version includes a standalone build engine. This can be useful if you want to maintain a clean build system, and only have the part of IS installed that compiles installations.

Personally, I have used Professional for years and it's satisfied all my requirements.

As far as Try and Die goes, it is a little confusing. To do this you have to create an account with Macrovision. Instead of signing up for the service, you can do a trial account to check it out. The part I don't understand is that Trialware is better suited to another product, I believe they call it Flexware Connect (may be wrong on the name). So, they have partially dropped it from InstallShield, and yet the trialware view has been left in the IS IDE in spite of all this.

I agree that Trialware is a cool idea, but when I tried to implement it a few months ago with InstallShield, I didn't have much success. Perhaps others will know more about this.

[gridman]

Something I forgot to mention.

The Premier version has additional InstallShield validators, over what the Professional version has. These are described as best-practices validators and I imagine they would be useful if your installations are submitted for certification in the Windows Logo program.

Your question reminded that I was considering upgrading from the Professional to Premier version just for the validation stuff. Haven't decided yet though.

[RobertDickau]

For a table of InstallShield 2008 features by edition, please see this chart.

For your second question, I gather that Express supports only "major upgrades", which typically uninstall an old product version before installing the new one; InstallShield 2008 Professional and Premier also support "minor upgrades", which install over an existing product to update it.

[RobertClark4777]

gridman wrote:
I can give you some information. There are a few differences between the Pro and Premier additions.

The Premier version offers localization, so if you are doing international installations in multiple languages, you will need the premier version. In addition, the Premier version includes a standalone build engine. This can be useful if you want to maintain a clean build system, and only have the part of IS installed that compiles installations.

Personally, I have used Professional for years and it's satisfied all my requirements.

As far as Try and Die goes, it is a little confusing. To do this you have to create an account with Macrovision. Instead of signing up for the service, you can do a trial account to check it out. The part I don't understand is that Trialware is better suited to another product, I believe they call it Flexware Connect (may be wrong on the name). So, they have partially dropped it from InstallShield, and yet the trialware view has been left in the IS IDE in spite of all this.

I agree that Trialware is a cool idea, but when I tried to implement it a few months ago with InstallShield, I didn't have much success. Perhaps others will know more about this.

Thanks for the tip. I have one product that will have overseas distribution but that's not a firm deal. I figure that I could upgrade if this topic comes up. Having to use a Macrovision service for the trialware feature pretty much ends that idea for me. It sounds like the Pro version might be a good first move from the Express edition. I appreciate your input!

[RobertClark4777]

RobertDickau wrote:
For a table of InstallShield 2008 features by edition, please see this chart.

For your second question, I gather that Express supports only "major upgrades", which typically uninstall an old product version before installing the new one; InstallShield 2008 Professional and Premier also support "minor upgrades", which install over an existing product to update it.

Robert,

Thanks for the answer to my second question, that clinched the deal I think. As for the tip about looking at the feature table, I thought it was obvious that I had seen the list. That was why I posted my question here. I read the list and didn't see what was a compelling reason to choose Premier over Pro, thus the reason to ask for input.