InstallShield AutoUpdate

I'm not one to usually go non-techie and go down the dark sales path, but I saw something I wanted to mention.

I picked up a copy of Jasc's Paint Shop Pro Studio. It's basically an uber-version of their Paint Shop Pro product. Anyways, after the install, I ran it for the first time and up came what looked like the Windows Installer Update site. I was a little thrown for a sec because I wasn't sure what was going on? Was I missing a critical update? If so, why was Jasc telling me this? Then I realized that it wasn't Studio but an Install Shield feature. Install Shield Corp has a nice Update Service. It basically gives you a nice web-based interface (like WUS) to check for components of your application and an integration piece to install them. They offer both an Install Shield-Hosted service or you can host it on your own infrastructure. Pretty nifty (although when they don't talk about how much it is online, I'm sure it's a big-ticket item).

Here's to more installers (especially the free ones like Inno Setup that I highly recommend) to combining these concepts. It would be nice if products built in more updaters themselves like Visual Studio (there is a "Check for Service Updates" but I've never got it to work and you have to go through the Add/Remove Programs to access it). Of course here's an opportunity to maybe build a component that does this easily for people.