Paint.NET is one of the mostly widely known and LARGE C# application with a few modules written in C++

___________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng., EIT. Senior Software Engineer

Scary indeed... All the MSI rules that must be executed and verified before, during and after the setup runs is an insane large number; and that doesn't even include any customer build rules. The documentation and complexity of MSI is just out of this world! but just imaging how long it takes Microsoft's build lab to Compile and BUILD the setup packages in the first place for Office and VS2005.. The nice thing about WiX over the Commercial MSI tools is that the latest version of WiX is now multi-threaded to speed up Build times on dual/quad core machines. http://wix.sourceforge.net/faq.html

________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng. Software Engineer

I've never used Wise or any other setup authoring package other then InstallShield. I started learning and using InstallShield back in 1999 using their native scripting language which is a lot like VB6 code. Since 2002 i've been using InstallShield Professional 7.0 and currently using 10.5 to author MSI setups; Vista will probably force me to upgrade to IS 12.0 soon... IS still has issues, bugs and a learning curve, but most of the complexity comes from the Microsoft's MSI complexity and not InstallShield directly. IS support people are very good and very responsive; However, If I was to start from scratch on a new product.. I would take a serious look at WiX. Microsoft's Open Source Windows Installer package based on XML and hosted on SourceForge http://wix.sourceforge.net/ WiX was developed initially by Microsoft employees before it was made open source, and has also been sweeping through Microsoft as their new standard MSI builder in addition to using the MSBuild tool. According to msft bloggers and channel9 videos; Microsoft uses WiX to author the setups for: 1) VS2005 2) Office 2003 (*not confirmed*) 3) Office 2007 .. and i'm sure a lot of other stuff. If you Don't need to support MSI setups; then InnoSetup is worth looking at!

________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng. Software Engineer

Almost a month ago I performed a "Vista Ultimate Upgrade (RTM build)" install onto one of my XP Pro (SP2) computers; The startup time is quick; faster then XP.. but the time it takes to log in is terrible; takes 10 times longer then XP under the same user account. Once your past the logon sequence, the machine and app speed is zippy.. but the login time and switch user time is killing me! PC Specs Are up to snuf.. I think the Vista Score is a 3.6 - AMD AthlonXP 2400+ - 2GB PC2100 RAM (2x1 Gig Sticks) - 40GB PATA Boot Drive C: - 200GB SATA-I Data drive D: - ATI Radeon X1300 PCI w/256MB RAM Would a "Clean Install" result in better login times? Heston

________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng. Software Engineer

Anyone have any insight regarding MSDN Professional Subscriptions and how the Vista Licensing will be affected in terms of activations and Virtual Machine usage. I often install my MSDN XP Pro licenses in VMWare VM's and then after a few months, destory it and recreate it for various reasons.

________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng. Software Engineer

To all the people that have performed clean installs of the Vista RC1 build. Has microsoft delivered on the feature of FAST full install times taking less then 15 minutes from DVD. I found the early beta's took forever. Heston

________________________________ Heston T. Holtmann, B.Sc.Eng. Software Engineer