Thinstall

  • Thread starter Thread starter J L
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J

J L

Has anyone used this product (Thinstall)? It sounds too good to be
true. One exe to distribute without installation issues. I ran across
a reference to it on a VB site and am curious if anyone here is using
it or has comments about the concept. I have no idea on pricing yet
(but I did see one comment it was around $200 for a single developer).

Any inpu appreciated,
John
 
Well I just received a formal quote...$4000.00 per application! OUCH
IMHO it is a great idea that is priced right out of the market. Are
there any other products similar that anyone knows about?

John
 
Yep...worse than that. I just got an email from Thinstall quoting
$4000 and it is PER APPLICATION! It is not per developer. So if you
have 2 or 3 applications this can be major bucks. I did write back and
suggest that a $200 per application price might be more profitable in
the long run. Gillette sells the razor blades not the razors!

Oh well...are there any competitors? I can not find any. Been
searching for a Virtual Operating System etc.

John
 
Yah, it's look like that this is a stuff for bigs companies only.

For Virtual Operating System, there are VPC2004 and VMWare but obviously,
these two are not for installing/deploying a software product. Do you have
any particular need or if you are just taking a look around?

S. L.
 
I just thought the concept of creating a single exe that had a VOS
layer between the OS and the application and used a virtual registry
was a very cool idea. I have suffered through DLL hell and struggled
with non-technical end users trying to install or upgrade my programs
and this approach would make life so much simpler (not to mention the
WFP issues too). A VOS in itself would not solve the problem. Would
need a complete environment to run the app including DLL and activeX
components.

John
 
Hi William,
Thanks for the link. I am a VB6 guy trying to move to .net so I have
some sophmoric questions...will the assemblies contain the complete
..net framework or does that still have to be installed separately?
Thinstall's site indicates that it allows only inclusion of the parts
of the framework required and not the whole framework and for activeX
components and dll's it creates a virtual registry and handles the
interface from the app to the os.

I guess what I am asking is does the ILmerge at least handle all of
the .net framework installation issues?

Thanks,
John
 
No. Has nothing to do with the Framework install. Framework must be
installed to run app as normal.
I am not too hot on things like ThinInstall. You have a whole new layer of
potential problems and deployment issues IMO. I am however confused. You
don't need reg entries or installs with .Net assems. You can xcopy them if
you want. I take it your also needing win32 native dlls that also need
registration that you call via pinvoke?
 
I have not developed in .net yet. Have been doing vb5, 6 for several
years and just now looking into it. I have had problems with installs
and dll hell in the vb5,6 era and am trying to understand the issues I
am about to face in the .net world.

I do agree that having a layer between my app and the os is worrisome
but the attraction of a single exe that you just download and run is
very appealing.

I dont want to waste more of your time. I have to study more about
assemblies and .net to really asses what I will need. I do anticipate
needing win32 dll's as I often work with multi-port com cards and use
a special dll for that.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.

John
 
XenoCode is an obfuscator and the latest version will also merge assemblies.
It's inexpensive and works fairly well.

--Gianluca
 
Well I just received a formal quote...$4000.00 per application! OUCH
IMHO it is a great idea that is priced right out of the market. Are
there any other products similar that anyone knows about?
Click to expand...

Don't know if it's the exact same thing, but you could check out
Salamander .NET Linker and Mini-Deployment Tool, which goes for $500
for a 5-license pack.

http://www.remotesoft.com/

Luke.
 
Hi Luke,
Thanks for the link. It sounds very good. It is not exactly what
Thinstall is but it does appear to solve several issues and to be a
good deployment tool also. And $500 for up to 5 developers is a much
much much more reasonable pricing. Too bad the Thinstall people can't
appreciate the magnitude of the market we "little" guys create...oh
well.

John
 
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