Services on Windows series

There seem to be a number of different ways to create services on Windows using Ruby. I am going to try some of them out and see how well each one works. I was using Ruby 1.8.6.
There are two parts to this. The first is managing the service process : creating,stopping ,starting etc
The second part is packaging a Ruby script so that it can be run as that service.

The approaches I will write about are:

• using win32-service to manage the service process and win32/daemon to create a process.
  
• using Microsoft NT Resource Kit instsrv.exe (service creation) and srvany.exe (will run a command)
  
• using Winserv
• using Firedaemon (looks nice but have to pay for each $35 pc)

My plan is to summarise here the strengths and weaknesses and then to write another page for each one on exactly how to make each one work.