Windows Installer Editor's Review

Make the installation, maintenance and un-installation of your software easy with Windows Installer.

So it’s still the good old program that provides a base on which software developers can make the installation, updating and un-installation of their products quick, easy and familiar for the user.

A nice addition for software developers is the ability to integrate a customer user interface handler in the installer package: personalise the product experience for your customers.

As for those customers, there’s some good news for you as well. No more installing each package individually and rebooting your computer for every single one! Imagine the time you’ll save. With Windows Installer 4.5 the process has integrated so the installation progress, rollback and reboot happens in one single action that makes the installation process simple and less time consuming.

Other updates of interest include the update supersedence resiliency, shared component patching resiliency during uninstall and custom action execution on update uninstall. As a result of these changes certain issues experienced whilst using earlier version of Windows Installer have been resolved, including a rather annoying glitch that even if a component of an update was shared by various products, that component would still be removed if the update was uninstalled.

Pro's: Integrated installation, rollback and reboot

Con's: None that we can see... reliable and easy to use.

Conclusion: Windows provide some of the most reliable software out on the market and this is no different. We highly recommend updating if you're running on a Windows OS.