Is it common practice on WIndows to allow the user to download
an installer that will really download the application ?
(once you downloaded the said Installer ?)
[quote=213848:@Emile Schwarz]Is it common practice on WIndows to allow the user to download
an installer that will really download the application ?
(once you downloaded the said Installer ?)[/quote]
It’s not uncommon 
As Sascha said it is not uncommon… (e.g. Flash, Acrobat, etc.) but I really hate this!
I am always in favor of Offline-Installer (the whole package) than an anonymous downloader proxy-stub something.
Sascha, Thomas: Thank you.
I too dislike that practice. I just throw away the last one who does that: I will never know how that software works (good or bad).
Especially when the application needs to be installed on multiple machines on a network.
As much as I like the “all included” installer, there are cases when such an installer that gets content from a server can be an asset.
Anybody who has been distributing evaluation packages (shareware, donationware, trialware, whatever similar), knows the PITA it is not only to get such archive listed by all repositories in the first place, but the major nightmare it is to update the packages over the servers diaspora. With an installer that gets the latest package from a server, the update is as far as uploading one version on one’s server.
Windows distribution being massively based on the try before you buy scheme, anything that helps maintaining the evaluation archives is a major productivity gain.