It’s definitely not elegant, but I find running filehippo’s udc alongside secunia’s psi weekly helps keep windows applications relatively updated.

Not only MS but OSX also suffers from this. The software updater handles official updates from Apple, but not others.

I’d love being able to load 3rd party repos for both Windows and OSX official updaters.

There was a promising sourceforge program a while ago – win-get. It just did installs, but promised to handle updates in the future. I don’t think it ever got there, and it seems unmaintained now.

Also, adobe’s download manager is the biggest piece of bloatware I’ve seen in ages. Updating reader – which is a gargantuan mess already – shouldn’t grind my computer to a halt for any amount of time, certainly now for 5 minutes.

I think the exploits in reader & flash are just further evidence of how dangerous a monoculture is. If everyone switched to foxit and silverlight or html5 + vorbis, the exploits would simply be found there.

MrJones wrote:

But most importantly, its not microsofts job to keep your software updated. If they update your software, they are responsible that it stops working and so on and on

But it *should* be. Aren’t they paid to provide an OS? That’s an important function of every OS, so they should be responsible for it.
Sure, if the repository has problems, it’s not their responsibility, but the updater should warn the user:
“Couldn’t update app X! Please contact company Y and ask for support”

But I thought Windows had something similar for enterprise environments – to allow IT managers to distribute updates network-wide. But I guess it’s for manual updates, and probably doesn’t provide an API.

@ ST/op:

Ah, yes. File hippo. I forgot to mention it in the post, but I was thinking about it while writing it. It is sort of a half-way measure. It would be almost perfect if it could silently install all the updates in the background once the user approves them, interrupting him only to agree to an ULA if necessary.

@ MrJones:

Haven’t really had much time to mess around with Windows 7. I made the jump to Vista only few months before Windows 7 hit the shelves. :P

But no – they don’t have to be responsible for the software they update. If the user adds a non-microsoft repository to Windows Update it should mark it as external and let the user know it is not supported and Microsoft is not responsible for it breaking.

All I’m asking for is for a feature that can fetch an MSI file from a remote server and install it in the background and then periodically check if an update was released.

Your are a little unfair when talking bout Microsoft. They did lots of sneaky things to get updates a little less messy in Windows 7.
-The Uninstallmanager now shows you the version numbers of the programs installed
-Hardwaredrivers are downloadable from the Microsoft Update Server and Updates are available too.
– Games can also be updated automatically or manually if wanted

But most importantly, its not microsofts job to keep your software updated. If they update your software, they are responsible that it stops working and so on and on

Think about that….

Filehippo did a decent try at addressing this problem, with their Update Checker. Of course, it “only” covers freeware and open source software, but it’s still a nice bunch of apps!
While by no mean as smart as apt or other package managers (it scans your computer for installed apps and generates a list of links to download updates from the Filehippo site), it is still quite useful.

*hugs apt-get*

no comments about aptitude ;)

aaand you did it again!

GET OUT OF MY MIND! STOP READING MY THOUGHTS!

*g*