I didn’t like using All in One Package during the my early years of learning how to install Apache, PHP and MySQL in my Windows box – there were programs like PHPTriad and similar which offers these three in one convenient installation without getting your hands dirty so to speak on the configuration. From my experience you should start with the manual installation to know the ins and out. That was what I was doing for the years, when a new version comes out I apply the upgrade to my system.
Earlier this month I got this client who uses WAMP 2.0 setup for the system we were developing. Somehow I wasted several hours trying to make it run on my system. Was getting close but somehow if some changes were done to the system codes I feel it would break again. So I decided to try using WAMP 2.0 and it turns out its not that bad afterall. It has a UI for disabling/enabling extensions and modules, you can still go into the php.ini, my.ini, httpd.conf if you decide to edit manually from a shortcut all in one convenient place in your systray.
It made my work faster, overall if you are using the manual way and move to an all in one package like WAMP 2.0 you would benefit both time and organization. I’m now a believer.
