what are the main diff between installer & the zipped blender download.

which is recommended?
I usually use the installer version. noticed the zipped one is larger?
are there significant differences, is one recommended over the other?
thank you
D

The zip file doesn’t need installation and it can be transfered to multiple computers with ease.

You basically want to run the installer once on a machine that has never had Blender on it. That gets all the system files in place. After that just pull down ZIP files with the incremental updates as you need them. Want to try a new feature that is still in development head over to www.graphicall.org or pull down one of the Builbot builds?

Thank you Atom!
D