I feel the need to rant! Have you seen the prices of InstallShield or Wise? What a ripoff! Someone in the development community needs to put an end to this! InstallShield X Premier will cost you a very hefty $2,500 and a gold maintenance plan will tack on an additional $1,800! That comes to nearly $4,300 JUST so you can have very professional installations for your applications. That is all that Installshield does! That and nothing more.
Before you start shooting hate mail, I know that VS.NET does have a very, very nice installer if all you want to do is install an application. If you need to setup a database you are out of luck. You have to write an exe that does it after the install. Not a terrible solution but not the professional installation that I want. A few months ago, someone wrote a weblog post about the limitations of the VS.NET installer tools. I can't find it right now but I have the same beefs as he did. If you know the post, please post the permalink.
I wouldn't pay $4,300 for a MSDN Universal subscription! MSDN will cost you approximately $2,500 but look at everything you get: Visual Studio .NET, access to all their applications and servers, access to the coveted private NNTP newsgroups, stellar support, and new software as it comes out. With InstallShield, you get only an install builder! How ridiculous!
Here is my proposal. Someone in the development community should start a new company to build install software and charge only $100-$250 a pop. I know there are good free, open source, and cheap tools out there but there needs to be an option that is as good or better than Installshield and very cheap. Come on, someone must be interested!