Comments on: Ultimate Software Update Monitor?

By: Trident

Trident — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:21:07 +0000

I’ve tried Software Informer and it is horrible (although it looks good). It has an enormous amount of faulty versions mentioned as “latest” to the point where i had a list of supposed outdated software, only one of which was actually outdated while the rest was just wrong versions. In some cases they used BETA’s as the latest versions without mentioning they were BETA’s.
In other situations it mentioned i had a version 11 when the latest was 11.xx.xx., even though my version was also 11.xx.xx.

It is basically the same problem with them as with most of the others like UpdateStar, in that they don’t take their own software seriously and fix the obvious flaws.
In this regard SUMo is still the best because while flawed at least you get the sense they are constantly working on it to improve it.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:22:08 +0000

Anonymous wrote:

Have you tried Software Informer?

Hadn’t heard of that before actually. Looks like it has a nice interface though, and so I’ll have to check that out. Thanks!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:39:54 +0000

Have you tried Software Informer?

By: Trident

Trident — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:25:49 +0000

I’ve tried several of these types of programs and i have to say that SUMo is the best yet. It’s not great, and there’s a lot of room for improvement, but the others are so poor that this comes out the best.
Hippo, UpdateStar, AppGet etc are for various reasons subpar. Either because the amount of software checked is very limited or because the database of “recent” versions is ancient. UpdateStar hardly seems to get updated and it mentioned an older version than the one i had installed to be the newest, recommending i “update” to what was actually an older version than the one i had installed (and no, it wasn’t because i had installed a beta). It does look more slick than SUMo however, but i found that counted for nothing. I manually entered updated info on some of my apps and sent it to them through their product, but after a week nothing was updated so i figured that because they are supposed to help ME rather than the other way around, their product was useless to me (for now anyways).

I find Secunia to be the best but unfortunately it is not a software monitor as much as a patch monitor, only letting you know about updates in case some software installed on your PC has vulnerability issues.

By: Pcfreakske2000

Pcfreakske2000 — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:00:19 +0000

I use Secunia Personal Software Inspector (RC1) which you can download at http://psi.secunia.com

By: Ian Cammarata

Ian Cammarata — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:29:36 +0000

Tinhed wrote:

Hello has anyone heard of Synaptic and Apt.

Gosh.. this just might the 13456th reason to switch to linux.

Are you kidding, Linux package managers are a nightmare (Only Linux distro I’ve ever used that didn’t trash itself was Ubuntu (Suse is trashed immediately after install if you choose the update everything now option )). While they have gotten better, at least in Ubuntu, I’d still prefer the way windows is now, to the Linux package managers. If you wanna compare to a package system that works, and works really well, how about the FreeBSD ports system, I have never had a single problem with it.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:26:18 +0000

Omar Upegui R. wrote:

I was thinking on using Hippo’s Update Checker. Have you tried it? If positive, could you share with us its features?

blaszta hit it right on the head. It’s a nice application for checking for updates, but it’s limited in what it is able to check for.

Tony_photoplus wrote:

Its not bad but Updatestar is much better as shows the version you have and the version update. So won’t be keeping this not as good.

It does show both the version you have and the version available.

n_sani_t wrote:

that said, my very first program on the list is Comodo, it says i have version 1.0.0.1 installed and that version 2.4.0 is available….but when i check the ‘about’ on comodo…it shows i have version 3.0.13.268

Huh, guess it can’t catch them all. And it did so well on the ones that I went through.

Tinhed wrote:

Hello has anyone heard of Synaptic and Apt.

Gosh.. this just might the 13456th reason to switch to linux.

That is one of my favorite things about Linux, but there are also several things that make it difficult for me to switch over 100%. So right now I’m hanging out between Vista and Ubuntu.

By: kvascola

kvascola — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:55:27 +0000

I’m just using RSS for filehippo-like sites.

By: n_sani_t

n_sani_t — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:04:29 +0000

regarding synaptic and apt, i imagine that if there were as few windows programs as there are for linux, perhaps there could be some sort of repository…but i’d prefer to have many many options and manually look fot the updates than just a few and have them hand fed to me. just my personal preference.

driver problems, such as creative resisting releasing code for linux to reverse engineer and create sound blaster live drivers, may be the 13457th reason to wait to switch to linux until it becomes just a bit more mainstream.

nothing personal, just tired of people entering forums and somehow finding a remote reason to promote linux, they’re starting to get as annoying as yankee fans. hehe.

(and yes, i’ve run linux. dual booted my vista machine with ubuntu, kubuntu, and a couple other flavors…i just prefer good sound and the ability to run my good programs without having to switch to a virtual machine)

By: Tinhed

Tinhed — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:24:00 +0000

Hello has anyone heard of Synaptic and Apt.

Gosh.. this just might the 13456th reason to switch to linux.

By: n_sani_t

n_sani_t — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:33:58 +0000

just a quick note to tony before i do a quick review: tony, there are 2 columns that show exactly what you’re complaining about.

that said, my very first program on the list is Comodo, it says i have version 1.0.0.1 installed and that version 2.4.0 is available….but when i check the ‘about’ on comodo…it shows i have version 3.0.13.268

not sure if i want to waste the time going through all the software or not. may have to look into updatestar.

By: Tony_photoplus

Tony_photoplus — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:34:21 +0000

Its not bad but Updatestar is much better as shows the version you have and the version update. So won’t be keeping this not as good.

By: Tonino

Tonino — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:29:21 +0000

I’m using “File Hippo Checker” daily since I discovered it.
While it doesn’t check 100% of my soft it does a great job at it.
Besides, it detects updates amazingly fast.
And you can choose to download from them or follow the link to the official page.
I tried Sumo before. it detects the updates quite nicely, but unless the “Get update” process is improved I’m not interested

By: blaszta

blaszta — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:02:27 +0000

@Omar
Hippo Update Checker is very good, and clicking the update link will take you to Hippo’s own website with direct download link. The downside: Hippo only has “limited” software collection (but common ones).

By: Omar Upegui R.

Omar Upegui R. — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:28:48 +0000

@Ryan:

I was thinking on using Hippo’s Update Checker. Have you tried it? If positive, could you share with us its features?

Thanks a lot.

Omar.-