[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Arryn:
[QBThe short answer as to what the big deal is today with needing a sophisticated installer can be summed up in two words: Windows Registry. The long answer involves *why* this is important, and an entire college-level course on the subject can be taught.
[/QB]

And even Microsoft has finally realized that the registry was a colossally bad idea; with the .Net compilers, the preferred install goes back to using something much more similar to the old .ini (or unix .cshrc) type files.

This is even for real applications. And _why_ did a game ever need to be put into the registry??? Install Solitaire, possibly destroy your computer because it updates the registry. Or because it updates the registry after you save a game, in order to update the Documents submenu for a recently used file.

Use of the Registry slowed down computer boot times, increased complexity, increased chances of catastrophic failure. Sure, _some_ things deserved to be in something like a registry - if a program handles a certain type of file, for instance.

But the options and settings for the program itself should never have been in the registry. 10 years later, Redmond's blunderers finally start to realize this.