When you purchase a web hosting package to build Drupal site, normally, your vendor will give you SimpleScripts or Fantastico in control panel as free, with which you could get most of popular applications (including Drupal for sure) installed with one simple click.

But this method is not recommended by most of Drupal experts, and what they suggest is to install Drupal MANUALLY. Why?

SimpleScripts and Fantastico will help you install Drupal quickly. What you need to do is to simply click the "Install" button, the tool will automatically create database, and install whole Drupal for you.

But all the convenience you get is just in installation. If you need to upgrade Druapl or relevant modules (upgration is something you might do frequently), you will have to do it manually. And Drupal version installed by SimpleScripts and Fantastico is normally not the latest one. Very often you need to upgrade your drupal code right after installation, which means you cannot get any benefit from SimpleScripts or Fantastico automoation installation tool.

Drupal has made the whole manual installation process very straight forward, and get it well-documented in http://drupal.org/documentation/install. Installing Drupal manually is real not a complex task now.