Before you can use any program, you often should make an installation using a software installer.

A lot of programs are shipped in a packed form.

Programmers who wish to save time or customer support service costs you may choose to employ an open source or commercial software installer.

If you work with Windows operation system, you may use Microsoft Windows Installer that lets programmers create installation.

IntstallShield and SetupBuilder are two more installation software applications for Microsoft Windows platform.

The majority of such applications make packages that offer a consistent experience for users installing different solutions.

Not happy with commercial installation creator software? Those who prefer open source solutions might have a look at Innosetup and some more programs that may be obtained freely.

A lot of programmers choose to make their products work on different platforms.

It is often quite a hard job to make individual installation setups for some different systems.

If each install creator for each platform be it Linux, Windows XP, Mac OS or a different platform was created individually, it would require quality assurance,that is extra time in production and testing to assure a satisfactory experience to users.

Fortunately, there are also cross-platform software installer solutions.

For instance, InstallAnywhere that is a commercial installation creator, or an open source Java install creator for different platforms called IzPack.

If we speak of installers, we should also say a few words about their cousins,that is uninstallers.

In the past some solutions did not have any uninstallers, so some third-party uninstallers were to be used.

However, these days the majority of software programs feature solid uninstallers, so you do not have to think a lot about getting some other application to delete stuff off your system.

In spite of everything such third party uninstallers are used these days.

One of the reasons for that is that a few programs prefer not to delete themselves entirely leaving some files behind.

One more difficulty that such programs can help with is deleting Trojan and spyware.

Such a soultion will not erase itself voluntarily, so some assistance from a dedicated uninstaller may be required.

If you care to find a better way to supervise cache memory or temporary files uninstallers may also be of use.