Custom install gone?

The writing does seem to be on the wall.

M$ is moving to a remove the middleman (resellers)) to subscription based hosted service not unlike an Iphone.

Windows 10 is well on it's way there too.

M$ phone and Surface are just the tips of the iceberg.

They have been pushing us resellers to give them our customers with things like Office 365 and Azure and give us an ever decreasing profit margin until they eliminate us all together.

Reminds me of the folks that find out they are being replaced by H1B's and need to train them if they want to get paid a one time "finders" fee.

Is this surprising?

No,it's Microsoft and they've been doing business like this for a very long time.

It seems to be part of their long-term strategy to remove control of your own PC from you.  It started with idiocy like removing the ability to manage wireless networks ("we know better than you how to do this, so we'll just remove the ability from the network control panel"), so now you have to drop to the command line and remember arcane netsh commands to do what you used to be able to manage with a mouse click.  It's just been getting worse over time.  If I wanted to have a faceless corporation dictating how I use my computer to me, I'd be using something from Apple.

Using newer Microsoft products seems to have become a bit like an abusive relationship, I keep having to find reasons why I'm still staying.  If it wasn't for the lack of alternatives to Word and DevStudio, I would have jumped long ago.

(Note: LibreOffice and Eclipse don't count as viable alternatives, they still have some way to go unfortunately).

It is only useful to MS. 

CTR reverts total control to MS. It allows them push out updates to everyone when MS wants to.  With everyone running the same version of the application (or one of a very limited set), it makes trouble shooting easier for MS.

There is an "old school" Windows technique you can try to redirect part of your installation to a secondary drive.  That is using a "symbolic link" to tell Windows that a given folder is actually in a different location. So while it looks like it is on the C: drive, it can be on some other drive.  Yes, I understand this is not the same as doing a custom install, reducing space used by eliminating applications, but it can help if you have a second drive.

Symbolic Links to redirect CTR installation?

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/be-more-efficient-and-better-organized-with-the-mklink-symbolic-link-tool/ -Be more efficient and better organized with the MKLink symbolic link tool

http://www.howtogeek.com/194431/how-to-sync-any-folder-to-the-cloud-with-symbolic-links/ -**How to Sync Any Folder to the Cloud With Symbolic Links**

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/  -**Complete Guide to Symbolic Links (symlinks) on Windows or Linux**

http://www.mydigitallife.info/create-symbolic-links-hard-links-and-directory-junctions-in-vista-with-mklink/-**Create Symbolic Links, Hard Links and Directory Junctions in Vista with MKLINK**

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930 - Link Shell extension (a tool to allow you to make the Links from Windows rather than from the Command Line)

Lost in this discussion is the question of "WHY?"

What is gained by going to this new installer type wherein no one can customize ANYTHING?

an msi was released for prior versions of Pro Plus