Gentee's CreateInstall Pro, offers an excellent scalable all round deployment solution for software development authors wether you are looking for a simple, once off, box standard "setup.exe" installation or a multi-colored, all singing all dancing multi-project, multi-application Diskette, CDRom and Internet deployment solution for your range of software applications. The resulting "setup.exe" or what ever you wish to call the installation file, is very simple to generate, the combined compressed file carry's a tiny overhead which is also very portable across the windows range of platforms. CreateInstall Pro, has an array of simple customizable wizards, which make's single and multi-projects easy to construct, enhance, manage and when required batch processing.
 
You can start with the basic product and advanced your installations based on an English like function driven scripting language which shares some similarities in syntax with xbase or php functionality. You can use the internal script editor or your favouring external editor, to add your own reusable #include functions. Full Functional inheritances (Global, Local, Static variable types), macro expansion and external call outs are all included as standard.
 
Also included with CreateInstall Pro is a client server Internet upgrading procedure, which allows end users to upgrade your applications over the Internet, allowing even the smallest of developers to provide their end users with anti-virus type updates.
 
Localization, is as simple as selecting the target language i.e. German, while you are free to create your installations in your local language i.e. English. If you application is also available in a choice of languages, you can use CreateInstall Pro to request that the user choose their preferred language and CreateInstall Pro will install that version of your application, making localization of both the installation and your application a simple task.
 
Registry management, is very efficient with features like "Take from Registry", "INI/Registry" and registration of "DLLs, OCX's, TBL's, Extensions and Fonts" are a simple task using the wizards. Overall, wether your shipping DOS, Windows X applications or just want to distribute your documents or graphics in structured well presented compressed, end user friendly solution, CreateInstall Pro offers both the hobby small developer and the serious software duplication and distribution manufacture an excellent "setup.exe" and Internet upgrading all round software installation solution. You can start with a no frills basic "setup.exe" installation (30 mins max) and advance at your leisure into a comprehensive multi-project batch processed multiple media deployment solution.
 
You dont have to agree with my view of CreateInstall Pro, you can also take a look for yourself by downloading the latest version of CreateInstall Pro as Gentee also has a trial version available for download from their web site at www.createinstall.com, which is well worth the download and weighs in at just under 500k. Gentee offers the standard help file, web site, email and forum support, but develops new features and functions in CreateInstall Pro faster than we can apply them to our installations, which in my experience is not always a good thing in the case of other large software vendors (u-know-who), but Gentee appears to pull this off with surprisingly relatively stable results. Remembering that every ones version of English etc. is not always the same "want, wish, can" etc.., Gentee allows the developer to customize even the CreateInstall Pro menu titles, prompts and errors messages to your desired version of English (Check out the Irish version of English).
 
The Bottom line is, what can I say other than, Gentee's CreateInstall Pro is an excellent installation application distribution solution, its as simple or advanced as you care to make it. We (Tasc) have looked at other "setup.exe" systems and CreateInstall Pro delivers a well rounded package, so much so, we dumped all our historical installation methods and replace them all with one, Gentee's CreateInstall Pro.

Written & Reviewed By: Brendon McLoughlin IBDE, Tasc Software, Ireland