Essential Free Software

"We have once again demonstrated our commitment to developers by beating all other vendors to providing native Windows Installer 4.5 support," says Sinan Karaca, Founder of InstallAware Software Corporation. "All our current users may immediately download the free plug-in update pack from our website -- without having to pay for or wait an extensive amount of time for a vital update like this."

Windows Installer 4.5 introduces major new features for application deployment, such as chaining multiple setup packages together. Multiple chained packages can be installed in a single, atomic transaction that can be rolled back if an error occurs in any one of the chained packages, or the end-user decides to abort the installation. This helps make application installations more robust, especially when most applications today have dependencies on component and technology frameworks. All .NET applications, for instance, require the installation of the Microsoft .NET Framework; which can now be installed together with your applications in a transactional, atomic way.

"Microsoft selected InstallAware as a launch partner on their first-ever coupled beta program for Windows Installer," says Panagiotis Kefalidis, Developer Evangelist at InstallAware Software Corporation. "We are proud to be working together with Microsoft in delivering our customer base the latest innovations in technology at breakneck speed."
   
Even without the Windows Installer 4.5 update, developers can already chain multiple packages together using InstallAware's advanced setup bootstrapping capabilities. InstallAware's advanced bootstrapper captures the actual installation progress of each chained package and displays it natively in your own setup wizard, dramatically improving the end-user experience, and impressing your brand throughout the entire duration of your application's setup -- even during the installation of its pre-requisites, such as the .NET Framework. InstallAware's advanced bootstrapper also pre-populates third-party package options as necessary -- instead of requiring end-users to manually populate configuration settings inside separate third-party installation windows -- eliminating yet another potential point of failure in your installations, which in turn helps reduce your support and maintenance costs.

It is not necessary to overhaul existing InstallAware projects to take advantage of Windows Installer 4.5 features. It literally takes two lines of InstallAware code -- one to begin a transaction, and the other to end the ongoing transaction -- to create atomic, transactional installation regions directly within existing setup projects. Absolutely no setup re-engineering is required. Coupled with InstallAware's existing bootstrapping capabilities, this makes InstallAware the tool of choice for building complex, powerful Windows Installer setups that span multiple setup packages.

Of course, if Windows Installer 4.5 is not available on an end-user system, InstallAware installs it automatically; if that is not possible, InstallAware gracefully downgrades chained installation packages to work successfully, even without transaction support.

InstallAware is available in multiple editions with prices starting at US$199. A time limited fully-functional trial download is available at http://www.installaware.com/ The plug-in update pack is available free of charge, for both trial and licensed users, at http://www.installaware.com/msi45plugin.asp

About InstallAware Software Corporation
InstallAware Software Corporation, founded in 2003, is a software development company focused solely on state of the art software installation tools which offer the highest compression ratios and bullet-proof installations. The company produces software installation and compression technologies for the Windows Installer (MSI) platform on the Microsoft Windows Operating System. InstallAware is supported by thousands of users worldwide, and is a CodeGear Integrated Partner. For more information, visit www.installaware.com.