Stand Alone EXE

  • Thread starter Thread starter David Pendrey
  • Start date Start date
I went to the Thinstall site and they sure make it complicated just to
get a trial or even pricing! Normally when a company wants to sell
something, they make it as simple as possible.

For example, they as for company information with web address. What if
I am an independent user and dont have a company web address?

Why do they want my phone number? I don't want a sales person to call
me. But you cant download the trial or even get the price without
providing all this information.

It looks like a cool product but I don't like jumping through hoops to
get it.

Chris
 
Scratch that! I can't even get a trial because my email address (at
sbcglobal.net) is rejected! Even though this is a national ISP!
 
Hi Jim,
I was very excited about Thinstall until I got this pricing from
Jonathan:


1 Application License per unit with Basic support $4,000.00

That is outrageous. For those who dont believe it, here is the link he
sent me to get that pricing

https://thinstall.com/store/index.php

He definetly needs to rethink his pricing structure! I do agree with
all you are saying. Thinstall's philosophy is the right way to go for
XCOPY to really work and they could make a killing if they set thier
price points correctly. I am a single developer creating custom
applications for some fairly large food processors. No way can I
afford that price. A few hundred dollars and it is tempting. I believe
Jonathan should rethink the possible/probable price/volume curve if he
did price this aggressively...let's see, how many millions of .Net
programmers?...

John
 
Either that or some of us smart guys can develop our own single package
installer and undercut the competition.

Brett
 
J said:
Hi Jim,
I was very excited about Thinstall until I got this pricing from
Jonathan:


1 Application License per unit with Basic support $4,000.00

That is outrageous. For those who dont believe it, here is the link he
sent me to get that pricing

https://thinstall.com/store/index.php
Click to expand...

Holy crap! That is some price increase! I bought it about 18 months ago
for $795 if I remember right. Just renewed it for another year of
upgrades for $300ish in December, too.

He needs to license per developer, that way the little guy can use it
and he can still hit up the big guys for a lot of money.
 
Yeah - the site is very convoluted. This product isn't for single
developers either. Read previous thread on pricing.

Brett
 
Brett said:
Either that or some of us smart guys can develop our own single package
installer and undercut the competition.

Brett
Click to expand...

The lack of competition is probably exactly what has driving the cost of
Thinstall up..

Your idea sure isn't a bad one! I could see something just to bundle the
..NET libraries around an executable as a MAJOR seller to .NET
developers. Obviously no trivial task, but certainly possible.
 
Steve McLellan said:
Notepad requires a runtime of sorts, and probably a load of libraries.
Hook a debugger up to it and see how many libraries load. The overhead is
hidden because they're generally already present, as will be the case with
the .NET framework at some point in the future. Things like Thinstall do
definitely have advantages, but if a bug crops up in a .NET component, how
do you patch it? You need to tell your users (it becomes a problem in YOUR
code, rather than the framework) rather than letting them just get updates
via Windows Update etc.
Click to expand...

If you product doesn't work, they are going to blame you anyway.

That's how customers are (and should be, if you think about it logically).
Most aren't programmers, or even all that technically literate. If they
click on your program's icon, they expect it to work. If it doesn't, your
product sucks (in their eyes).

They don't care why it doesn't work. And they have been given the
run-around so much (the PC maker blames Windows, Microsoft blames a driver
manufacturer, the diver manufacturer can't be found......the PC user is
still screwed and now just more angry) that they don't want to hear that
it's someone else's fault. They just want it to work.

Cool thing about a Thinstall app is that you can also program it to update
itself. So, if you put a new version on an available server.....you're set.

I've read the pricing concerns above, and I'll talk to Jonathan about it
today.

Jim Hubbard
 
Hi Brett,
My thoughts exactly. Being the Laisez Faire Capitalists that I am...I
am betting on competition to put this market right eventually. I am
not capable of it, but with all the talent on this NG there must be
some who could do this...maybe not with all the bells and whistles but
doing the most important features (even there, I dont know what I am
talking about LOL)

John
 
J said:
He definetly needs to rethink his pricing structure!
Click to expand...

I have to agree. The main selling point of the product was to
eliminate the need for downloading and installing the .Net framework.
There are other benefis to be sure, but that is the main one. Once
your app get appreciable in size, that becomes less of an issue.

To me, the main users of that product would be small, shareware
developers who want their programs to download quick. But the pricing
is for a large development house.

Perhapse they could come up with different levels of the product such
as Personal, Professional, and Enterprise levels with more features
available in the advanced products. They could, for example, limits
the Personal edition to only Windows forms and libraries. If you want
to use more complex features of the .Net runtime, you would need more
advanced versions of Thinstall.

My 2c

Chris
 
Well perhaps we are either enticing a guru to consider a great
opportunity or getting Thinstall's attention to review pricing. Isn't
this the market place and isnt the market speaking to them. Of course
they are free to do as they please but it has definetly priced me out
of the market.

John
 
Jim Hubbard said:
With Thinstall this is not an issue.
Click to expand...

I still doubt that there are no legal issues with distributing only parts of
the .NET Framework...
 
I think there is more to it than just minimizing the file size and
downloading ther required dependencies. It has been a while since I
studied their site but I do remember that they are creating a virtual
space to run the app. But in any case, there is a need to be filled
here byeond the way MS is handling deployment.

John
 
Thinstall apps are still a lot larger than a simple exe output from .Net. I
did an experiment with Washington University's .Net rewrite of the classic
Paint program. If you downloaded the .Net framework and the code needed to
run Paint 2.0 it added up to over 27 MB. The same application compiled with
Thinstall was just over 14 MB and needed no installation, needed no
administrator privikeges, and will never have its files overwritten or
corrupted because they are all inside the Thinstall EXE.

Why didn't Microsoft think of this? They have seen and used Thinstall, and
even spoke well of it.
Click to expand...

The problem is, as soon as you've got a few programs using Thinstall,
you end up having downloaded more than you would have done if you'd got
the real framework and individual small programs...
 
Herfried K. Wagner said:
I still doubt that there are no legal issues with distributing only parts
of the .NET Framework...
Click to expand...
If you want to write a shareware app and know most people that are going to
use it are on dial-up, what are your options? 20+ megs is out of the
question in this case.

Brett
 
Brett,

What country are you from. In my country there is almost no dialup anymore.

Certainly not by people who are downloading shareware.

Cor
 
Cor said:
Brett,

What country are you from. In my country there is almost no dialup anymore.

Certainly not by people who are downloading shareware.

Cor
Click to expand...

A little country called the USA, and there are a LOT of dialup users
here. Judging from the transfer rates from my webserver, a whole lot of
my customers are using dialup (more than %50 if the stats aren't telling
lies)..
 
Jon Skeet said:
The problem is, as soon as you've got a few programs using Thinstall,
you end up having downloaded more than you would have done if you'd got
the real framework and individual small programs...
Click to expand...

You give people the option to download the Framework or stand alone EXE.
Explain the benefit of download the Framework as it applies to future .NET
apps they may use. If they are on dial-up and still don't have .NET
Framework, chances are they probably won't for a while. In that case,
they'll more than likely choose the stand alone EXE.

Brett
 
Back
Top