How is NI able to create such epic installations?

[tesla745]

It's impressive how long it takes to install anything from National Instruments. Most modern software packages from other vendors install in a few minutes, but the NI engineers have somehow been able to extend this to several hours! How do you  do it?

[santo_13]

It is frankly a complex piece(s) of software with a lot of dependencies and modules that are installed in a proper order to be functional together.

One key items that slows down the installation is the Antivirus starting to scan every single file as the installer is running, taking the processing power away from important items.

[gagglexon]

Their software is awful. I need to download and run a 1GB installer to install a GPIB driver. And it's not enough to have something installed, it must also be installed in the correct order.

Yes it's complex but only because they made it so.