Actual difference between online and offline installers?

Question

When downloading Paratext 8, I’m told:
The Online file is smaller and may be used if you are installing while connected to the Internet.
The Offline file is larger and must be used when installing while not connected to the Internet. This is the one you would normally download to install on a different computer.

What is the actual difference between the installers? For some offline installers the main (only?) difference is the inclusion of dot net, which is installed on almost all recent Windows computers anyway. I dutifully downloaded the offline installer, since I can’t guarantee an Internet connection for our installs, but I would rather not have to download that extra 85Mb, if I don’t have to.

Answer 1

.Net runtime is the biggest difference - the offline includes .Net 4.5.1.
This is about 68M.

There are also 3 C++ runtime installers in the offline version - because we
use C++ libraries from different providers, we currently can’t just use one
version of this. All three add up to about 17M.

It is unlikely to have all 3 C++ runtimes when installing Paratext 8 for
the first time on a machine. Also any version of Windows before Windows 8.1
may not have .Net 4.5.1. This is a newer version of .Net than we had with
Paratext 7.

John+Wickberg
Paratext Support

Answer 2

Yes, the only difference is the inclusion of .Net 4.5 and the C++ runtimes needed to run Paratext. Specifically the following (if you want to check to make sure you already have them):

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable (x86)
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (x86)
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Redistributable (x86)

If you have had any previous version of Paratext 8.0 installed, the offline version should be just fine as you would already have the needed prerequisite files.