Last December we wrote about a cool little program called AppSnap that would automatically install dozens of applications on your computer. The nice thing is that it always goes and retrieves the latest version of each program from their respective servers so that you don’t have to worry about keeping AppSnap itself up-to-date.
Now there is a new option in AppSnap for upgrading your already installed programs, such as Launchy and Gimp. It will go and fetch the current version for every program that you have installed, and it will tell you which of them have upgrades available. Then the magic happens as it automatically downloads the necessary files from the site, and overwrites the existing ones on your computer. It is truly a seamless upgrade process.
Unfortunately the database of applications it works with is quite limited, but I would say it covers all of the most popular freeware. It is a pretty good alternative to the UpdateStar application, although that isn’t able to download and install any of the programs.
In this Thursday’s CyberNotes I’ll be showing you how to make your own customized update notifier that includes only the programs you care about!
AppSnap Homepage (Google Code Download Mirror)
Source: Lifehacker
Really not a piece of software worth bothering with. It is terrible at detecting already installed software. Also when it installs apps, it does it as silently as possible, with no options, so with the ad supported software, you get a default install with all the annoying sponsor toolbars and what not.
IMHO you can do just as well, maybe even better, by simply bookmarking this site: [osswin.sourceforge.net]
I never really thought about that, but I don’t know of any open source programs that really install sponsor stuff.
Several of the apps this program tries to manage aren’t open source. Just form the screen shot, Opera, and the one specifically that I was complaining about was CCleaner.
Ahh yes, I forgot that CCleaner installs the Yahoo toolbar by default. Your point is very well taken.
Hey Ryan, I’m the AppSnap author, thanks for the review.
Just wanted to clarify that the CCleaner issue was brought up earlier. I updated the database to download the slim version instead that does not contain the Yahoo toolbar.
Also, it is now possible to disable silent installs altogether so you can control the install process to your liking.
As for the limited database size, yes, there’s no contest with commercial options like UpdateStar that boast support for thousands of applications. AppSnap currently supports 160 applications and the list is now growing faster thanks to contributions from users. But if there are some obvious missing ones, do let me know and I’ll be happy to add them.
I’ve also subscribed to your daily downloads section to help grow the application list.
Thanks again.
Glad you got the CCleaner issue fixed! And I would say for how extensive the program is that 160 apps is quite a lot!