InstallAware X2 is the perfect New Year’s Resolution for all setup developers:
Fastest: New InstallAware X2 creates setups that install 50% faster than InstallShield (when InstallScript is used) and 17% faster than WiX (or Windows Installer) (1).
Smallest: New InstallAware X2 creates setups that are 174% smaller than InstallShield (when InstallScript is used) and 224% smaller than WiX (or Windows Installer) (1); compresses data up to 95% smaller(2) overall.
Safest: In more than a decade, InstallAware has never opened up systems with InstallAware-installed apps to attack(3), or had its toolchain rendered inoperative by Microsoft updates(4). InstallShield has been afficted by, and afflicted end-user systems with, both types of problems.
Freshest: Only new InstallAware X2 integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2013, containing runtimes for Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6 and the entire Microsoft Windows 10 eco-system.
Super-Stable: Both InstallShield and WiX failed to create a simple ‘xcopy setup’ installing the InstallAware X2 application folder(4). Industry bloggers for InstallShield and WiX, as well as InstallShield and WiX contacts, could not be reached for comment.
Most-Visible: Only new InstallAware X2 pins your apps programmatically to the new Microsoft Windows 10 Live Tiles Start Menu, or the existing Microsoft Windows 8.1 Start Screen.
Special Effects: Only new InstallAware X2 setups have special effects like those found in Microsoft Visual Studio installers. Enjoy sliding and fading wizard animations, please your next-generation app-savvy clients. Beauty and intelligence combined!
Based on the objective metrics of speed, size, stability, and safety; as well as subjective unquantifiables such as beauty, InstallAware X2 is the only Windows Installer that makes sense.
(1) Please see InstallAware‘s benchmark results at http://www.installaware.com/benchmark.asp. Had InstallShield and WiX been able to perform the ‘xcopy setup’ as we had originally intended, our speed and size savings would have been even more dramatic! Unfortunately, this was not possible due to critical bugs.
(2) The Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.2 runtime, when compressed with InstallAware X2, reduces from approximately 1.5 GB to 50 MB.
(3) In 2008, a vulnerability was discovered in the InstallShield Update Service Agent, as documented at https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/837092. Arbitrary code could be executed, compromising any system with InstallShield-installed products on them that made use of the InstallShield Update Service.
(4) Microsoft’s Security Update KB2962872 is crashing multiple versions of InstallShield as described at http://windowsitpro.com/security/micros … tallshield.