After designing, writing and debugging your latest application, there's only one decision left to make: what are you going to use to create the installation program?

Traditionally developers been faced with a couple of choices. Spend hundreds of pounds on one of the market leaders, then days learning how to use it. Or choose a budget installer with just doesn't provide the features or flexibility you need. Not very appealing, really, but now there's another way.

Launch the QSetup Installation Suite and at first it looks just like any other basic setup creator. You just click on various tabs to define your project description, files to install and so on, and compile the finished results when you're done.

But then you take a closer look at some of the options available, and realise there are some powerful features here. How would you like your applications to automatically update themselves over the Internet, for example? You can add this ability by filling in a single dialog box.

There are comprehensive tools to customise the users PC when they're installing your app. You can add custom strings to the environment, lines to an INI file, Registry keys and values, as well as creating shortcuts or file associations. It's up to you which of these are removed later by the Uninstall program.

Maybe you have more complex requirements? Then take a look at the options available under the Execute tab. This lets you perform an option based on conditional tests, perhaps running a particular executable if the users PC had a particular service running, and had less than 256MB of RAM, but was not running Windows 2000.

This could all get quite complicated, but fortunately QSetup defaults to displaying Help as you view each screen. You'll master the basics very quickly, and even the most complex of installation programs should be completed within an hour.

Upgrade to QSetup Pro 4

Keep your installation programs up to date with the latest QSetup version.

New QSetup Pro 4 features include new installation dialog styles, the ability to play audio tracks during setup, and an option to create serial numbers based on the user or company name. The cost is $99 (about £60).