I WOULD IMAGINE THERE ISN'T ANY BENEFIT TO USING EXTERNAL CAB FILES.

I HAVE DONE SEVERAL PACKAGES USING BOTH INTERNAL & EXTERNAL CABS, AND UNCOMPRESSED EXTERNAL FILES WITHOUT ANY DIFFERENCE.

IT MAY BE A MATTER OF CHOICE!

The purpose of external CAB files is that it enables you to span a large MSI package across multiple floppy disks/CDs/DVDs. I can't think of any other reason to use external .CAB files.. unless you're doing some very unusual custom actions that need access to the CABs.

Main benefit is if you have a change to the MSI and recompile, Wise won't have to stuff all the files back if it's externally stored. Unless there's a change in the files or file structure.

This can be a significant issue with large applications.

Also I think performance is faster generally, installing and compiling with external cab files. I prefer to use just one cab to keep it simple. If it's a small package I'll use internal cabs in the MSI.

YMMV.

A word of warning.

I have found that external cabs can ge corrupted during distribution to DFS links and network shares so I have stayed right away from them as a rule.

I also found that DFS shares caused problems with external cab files (though I thought it was a site specific problem, the DFS share was a little rickety at this place, I wasn't the one looking after it), so I've always used internal cab files.