[Gerard]

I'm in the 'most of the time I use CAB files' camp. That's for one reason: the odd software won't function correctly with a CAB install, or does not provide a CAB file. Two prominent cases for me are Textmaker and Stowaway keyboard installs. The former comes with 'data1.cab' and such, but no true final package installer for the PPC. It must be installed from a PC, it seems. The Stowaway provides a CAB once unpacked, though it's a bit tricky to grab, but installing this way gets me a 'cannot find language dll' sort of error, and the keyboard refuses to work. Again, must have a PC handy. That stinks, and it's not Microsoft's fault. ThinkOutside/Targus is to blame for never responding to my many complaints about this. I did a Stowaway review, for the Casio version, and was in a lot of contact with a ThinkOutside rep (they invented the thing - Targus is merely a distributor). On the CAB question I got not one word, ever. On everything else the rep was very cooperative.

Otherwise I use CABs, and that's about 98% of my installs. I've found that many 'EXE' files are in fact ZIP or RAR files, and can be unpacked on my iPAQ very easily with any number of softwares. PocketRAR is especially handy.

As for them not disappearing, just mark the file Read Only before use, or check that option in CabInstl, and worry no more; the file will still be there later, for archiving in a card. I like to keep my CABs in RAR archives, as PocketRAR is more stable than Resco Explorer for compressing to very small sizes. Of course, this sort of stuff is not for the novice, who is often confused by even Activesync installation options.