Archive for the ‘Software Update Utility’ Category

UpdateStar will find updates for your installed programs

January 13, 2009


Overview:

UpdateStar is free software that lets you stay up-to-date with the personal software installations on your computer. It eases your life as a software user and makes sure you always have the most up-to-date software versions. UpdateStar covers all of your freeware, shareware, demos, commercial software, and includes special offers.

Review:

Going to a program’s website to check if there is a new version can be a bother, specially if you have a large quantity of software installed in your machine. Thankfully with UpdateStar you can solve this. UpdateStar will search for all the paid and free software currently installed in your computer and will let you know if there are any updates available, if there are you can quickly go to the program’s page and download the new version. In my computer UpdateStar managed to recognize most of my installed software and most of the current updates available too which is great. Of course there was some instances in which UpdateStar didn’t know about a certain program or the latest update wasn’t listed and this is where you can help if you have some free time. You see UpdateStar relies heavily on user contributions for information about programs and updates, so if you have some free time help fill information about your favorite programs in the UpdateStar website. You can keep UpdateStar running on the system tray so that it can look for software updates daily,weekly or monthly. Also it can work as basic program uninstaller which is a little handy if you ask me.
UpdateStar works well most of the time and is easy to use, tough i had some problems with the system tray icon not showing up. Maybe it’s because i have too many system tray icons, anyway UpdateStar still worked well regardless. Available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

Get it at http://www.updatestar.com/

FileHippo.com Update Checker can let you know if your programs have updates available

January 12, 2009


Overview:

The Update Checker will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to FileHippo.com to see if there are any newer releases. These are then neatly displayed in your browser for you to download.

Review:

FileHippo.com is a great place to find free programs (some of the programs featured in this blog have come from there) so if you have programs that you download from there then FileHippo.com Update Checker is a pretty good way to keep them up to date. Just download the installer or the portable version and run it so that it can check your installed programs, a browser window will be opened with direct links to download the newest versions of your software. Unfortunately FileHippo.com Update Checker can only check programs that are added to the website so if you have programs that are not there you are out of luck. You could try Updatestar tough which is another software update utility with a larger software database but it’s not portable.
In conclusion if you only have programs that are on the FileHippo.com website then this update checker is a good way to keep them up to date. Available for Windows 98/ME/2004/2003/XP/Vista.

Get it at http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/