i would like to manage my package

January 16, 2006 12:27 PM

In light of the recent release of google pack, is there current windows software that periodically updates my entire software collection?

The only example I can find is through debian (and possibly other flavors of linux). Using apt-get, debian can determine the updates for every software package on a linux system. Does this exist for windows?

It would save me about 45 minutes every day, as I am somewhat OCD when it comes to keeping my computer up to date. Also useful... is there something that can do this for hardware drivers?

Examples of inapporprite answers for this question include: use a mac; switch to debian.

posted by |n$eCur3 to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Response by poster: Also, I should add, windows update only updates the OS (and a few other MS things). I am interested in software that can keep track of all of the stuff that I install.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 12:31 PM on January 16, 2006

cygwin works like that, and runs on windows, but perhaps you want something that looks after "all your windows software"? if so, i doubt it happens; everything needs to be packaged consistently and free licencing obviously simplifies things hugely.
posted by andrew cooke at 12:52 PM on January 16, 2006

the google pack is still in beta. from what ive read, they plan on improving it and adding much more software. if your patient u can wait for the new version to come out.
posted by deeman at 1:02 PM on January 16, 2006

Response by poster: andrew cooke, yeah, i want it to look after all of my windows software.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 1:07 PM on January 16, 2006

No.

Any tool that may purport to do something similar will be extremely inefficient and cause more problems than pennies.
posted by mr.dan at 1:54 PM on January 16, 2006

*sigh* CNet used to have something like this called catchup.com which would use an ActiveX control to compare your program files directory with the versions of said software on download.com.... a few years ago, for no particular reason, they made it go away.

Mac users have macupdate desktop which does this.

But don't switch to a Mac.
posted by softlord at 2:38 PM on January 16, 2006

mindless updating sounds like many problems..

i think some of the big shareware downloading and rating sites (fileforum, tucows, zdnet for starters) would work for this purpose, just keep a list of bookmarks of all the programs you have installed and periodically check the pages
posted by suni at 2:47 PM on January 16, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for the comments... so far the CNet program is the closeset thing to what I'm looking for, though now it seems that it has in fact been cancelled. Sigh, I guess I'll just have to wait for google to come out with a more comprehensive pack, or *gasp* wait for windows vista (it might have some feature like this).
posted by |n$eCur3 at 5:09 PM on January 16, 2006

Make sure not to miss Microsoft Update, as opposed to Windows Update. At least if you switch to MS Update you can do the OS and all your Office products in one go.
posted by tiamat at 7:10 PM on January 16, 2006

There once was a product called "Oil Change" that was later bought by McAfee that did exactly what you're talking about. . . I can't find anything current on it, but I can't imagine they'd just abandon that product. It could be under a different name or incorporated into one of their suites now.
posted by BrandonAbell at 11:37 PM on January 16, 2006

VersionTracker lets you track the versions, but it doesn't update software automatically
posted by Sharcho at 4:51 AM on January 17, 2006