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Standalone MSI-Based Download for SkyDrive Pro Removed for Good
Stating compatibility issues with Microsoft Office 2013's click-to-run installations, Microsoft has removed the SkyDrive Pro MSI-based client as a standalone download.
Rod Trent
January 10, 2014
1 Min Read
Stating compatibility issues with Microsoft Office 2013's click-to-run installations, Microsoft has removed the SkyDrive Pro MSI-based client as a standalone download. The standalone client can still be installed, but the click-to-run version is the only version now available, not the MSI package.
Microsoft has been steadily moving away from MSI-based (Windows Installer) installations, which have always been too complex anyway, requiring a lot of manual manipulation to customize, deploy, and patch.
Click-to-run provides many benefits over the MSI installation. Some of those are:
The technology uses streaming to download and install, making downloads faster and ensuring download and installation happens in the background. So, it's less intrusive to the business worker.
Updates to products are provided automatically and don't require downloads or patches.
Running different versions of the same products side-by-side is viable. For example, an end-user could run Office 2010 and Office 2013 on the same computer.
Click-to-run applications only use about half the disk space as MSI-based installations.
A standalone installation is still available, just not in the MSI-based format. The full list of SkyDrive Pro installations, along with the x-platform and specific languages can be found here:
How to install the SkyDrive Pro sync client for SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online
What's not clear, though, is since the MSI-based installation has been retired due to compatibility reasons, should those that have the MSI-based SkyDrive Pro client installed uninstall it and install the click-to-run version? I'll be digging in to see what the communication is. If you figure out before me, let me know.
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