Category: Geeks r Us
Such a simple thing while downloading programs, right? I use to think so. Now I'm curious.
Which do you tend to do? I have almost always run as, unless the programs recommends saving as.
My question here is, if you save as, then run it on your local machine, what do you do with that msi file? I think it is msi. If I saved as everything, I'd have a bunch of large msi files hanging about. Is it necessary to hang on to those?
I was curious. I was on the phone with a tech guy the other day, and he asked about my msi file. I said, I need to go to the website and download the file. It would have never occurred to me to save as and hang on to that installation package.
Look forward to your tech guidance.
I usually hang on to most programs I download off the net for that very reason, and delete it at a later date if I decide I won't need it anymore.
I use "save as" so if I need to, I can install the program later. But I usually delete the original file after I've installed the program. I figure that most of what I installed from online are not essential to my computer working well, and the ones that are will need to be updated at some point anyway. I do remember the names of what I install though, especially the antivirus, firewall, and other things like that, so if anything comes up where I need to look for that program, I can just Google it.
Hmmm, this is interesting. So, say you buy a second computer, can you transfer downloads that way? Go to the fold where all these install packages are, and copy them to say a thumbdrive, then plug that into another machine?
I see how this could be handy, it just seems like it'll take up a lot of space. Some of these install packages are large. Isn't it like having the program on your computer twice? Space wise?
The .mis files (or .exe they can be just plain executables) are not necessarily equal to the size of the program, often the program files are compressed and part of the installation process is unzipping them into the predetermined folder and then compiling, linking etc as needed for the program to become active, then copy items into start menu, desktops etc (I've only written one program for client installation and only as part of a group but a lot of thought goes into these things let me tell you).
Code takes up relatively tiny space, compared to, say, movies, music and the like, I think Jaws is 64mb now, may be 75, that's not even 2 mp3 albums in a decent (256) compression and with computer hard drives typically between 230gb and 1tb these days keeping the files is just no biggie, even on a flash drive, you can get 16gb flash drives for around $30 and 8gb for down to $10, and these can be handy to have.
It's not a big deal but, to name one advantage, many malware and virus programs actually and purposely block your access to any home pges of known anti virus or anti spamware code and blocks the installation of such code, even blocks your internet access altogether or redirects any request for a web page to one with a fake anti malware program that they hope you'll spend money on.
It took me a lot of work to manage to download anti spamware program once my PC got infected, so having a copy of said program on a flash drive or the hard drive itself could save a lot of head ache. Also my Foobar media player used to be perfectly accessible and awesome to keyboard navigate. Then they did a major "upgrade" and now it's impossible to use the thing any more. I tracked down an old copy on a site that was called someting like OldSoftware.com, but it hit home the need for me to sve an accessible version of a program in case you do not wish to get the latest and greatest because it may not, in fct, be the greatest at all, but the manufacturer and all web sites will be pushing the most up-to-date version, making your accessible one hard to find.
Cheers
-B
It all comes down to personal choice really. I don't install things that often these days - and when I do, I always just run the program as apposed to saving it.
If you have enough disk space then by all means save everything.
Hmmm, so if I ever come across msn 7.5 again, it may be a good idea to save instead of run. Then I'd always have it! At least until my screen reader is more up to date. lol!
I did just track down winkey, so I could save it. I love that program and would like it on future systems.