Switching over to InstallShield

[johnlo]

Hello,

I am an InstallAware user and have been recently considering switching to a different setup authoring tool. What are the pros of switching to InstallShield? What unique features does InstallShield have?

Looking forward to your response,
John

[Reureu]

Pros:

• You can sequence your custom actions and handle their code in one IDE.
  
• It has a Visual Studio integration.
  
• The InstallScript language allows to implement most of your needs for daily business.
  
• It is a de-facto standard in many companies. You will probably be able to profit from your experience with this tool on the day you work for another company.
  
• The release flags which allow you to build different releases from the same project.
  

Cons:

• Each new version comes with loads of bugs. You have to wait until they have at least released a few hotfixes or a service pack to reach a certain stability.
  
• They don't make their bug tracking system public. So you don't know when bugs will be fixed.
  
• The tool is damned expensive. Then you have to pay for support.
  

In my humble opinion, other free alternatives are better than InstallShield.
List of installation software.

[johnlo]

Dear Reureu,

Thanks for your reply. Actually, InstallAware demonstrates all the pros (and more) you mentioned with regards to InstallShield - InstallAware has the MSIcode scripting engine that allows you to fully customize and control your installation, extending Windows Installer while remaining confined to it so to not require a 3rd party scripting engine. InstallAware too integrates into Visual Studio. InstallAware also allows the use of flags or compilation variables..
Are there any other pros to InstallShield that I should consider?

Thank you

[Christopher_Pai]

Then why are you here?

[Reureu]

Well, it seems that InstallAware and InstallShield are 1:1 comparable:
equivalent features, similar support scheme...

InstallShield is more expensive though!

Just do a google search for "InstallShield vs InstallAware", and you will get other opinions.

[mjj964]

From what I've read, it seems that InstallAware was created by some folks who originally worked at InstallShield, and then left and created a better product from everything they'd learned. I guess that's the benefit of getting to start from scratch :-), as you don't have to keep on supporting all the issues from past development mistakes!

I see this InstallAware video, which I presume was created by InstallAware themselves. Has anybody out there done their own side-by-side comparison, building installations from both systems? I looked around the InstallAware questions page on StackOverflow and didn't see anything substantial there.

[Christopher_Pai]

mjj964 wrote:
From what I've read, it seems that InstallAware was created by some folks who originally worked at InstallShield, and then left and created a better product from everything they'd learned. I guess that's the benefit of getting to start from scratch :-), as you don't have to keep on supporting all the issues from past development mistakes!

I see this InstallAware video, which I presume was created by InstallAware themselves. Has anybody out there done their own side-by-side comparison, building installations from both systems? I looked around the InstallAware questions page on StackOverflow and didn't see anything substantial there.

If InstallAware was a better product, I'd be using it. I can tell you though that I get sick of the owner stalking me on the internet and sending me abusive hate emails every time I have something good to say about someone other then InstallAware.