Vista Tutorial - One for the toolkit? - SUMo

As most computer technicians should know, computer security isnt just about having up to date antivirus and anti-malware software. It is also about having the users software up to date as well.
Windows Updates is obviously one of the most important ones but many technicians forget about third party software like Firefox, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo etc.. and unfortunately there isnt really a good way to check the versions of third party software other than opening each one and viewing the about information. This is where SUMo comes in. SUMo (Software Updates Monitor) is a small, freeware application designed to scan a system for installed software, check its version and let you know whether there is an update for it. If there is, it shows you a handful of places where you can download the most recent version.

More plus download details at source

» Repair Tool of the Week: SUMo - Technibble - A Resource for Computer Repair Technicians & to get PC tech support help.

Secunia PSI is a much better alternative, if it were only portable.

I personally got too many false positives with both SUMo and Update Star, and stick to FileHippo, even though there are problems with them as well. FH has both a setup version and a standalone version, making it easily portable.

Hi john

thanks for the feedback ...

haven't really used this much yet myself and I also have File hippo loaded which i use.
I posted this as I have found the source to be very reliable in the past,

If you think it's best to kill the thread based on your experience with the product please go ahead. I would not like to mislead anyone

Nope - not killing the thread - I found it to be partially reliable as it would simply not list some of the apps I had installed at all and thus would not look for updates - however, I used it for a while when I first learned of it. Perhaps it has gotten better since then....

I'm going to give this a try as I havent got any programs installed that do this task yet, I'll let you know how it goes.
Pooch

Hi pooch,

Have tried it myself and it found 297 applications on my Vista install less than that on my Windows 7 test install. It was a useful exercise as a few of them I installed a while ago and not had used since the initial try-out It cleaned a bit of space anyway

One thing to look at is the 2 settings (just the start menu or in depth scan of Program files folder). It also displays a lot of Microsoft excecutables which are probably things I'll never run directly

Quite a few minor updates (and a few major updates where I have old versions installed because I cant/won't afford to update them )

What I did like was the ability to send the list to a spreadsheet, (now that will be useful on other peoples machines)

I have installed it on both x32 and x64 the installation ran very well on both systems.

It has found most but not all apps on a normal scan on both systems 29 apps x32 bit and 93 apps x64 bit (depends on installed apps)

The in-depth scan finds a lot more 168 apps x32bit and 234 apps.x64 bit

The microsoft scan finds microsoft products no surprise here

While using the in-depth scan I recieved error messages on both systems. This did not seem to affect the scan results

I dont understand why there is an option to do an in-depth scan as I want all results the first scan. That is after all why I installed this program.
I do like however the option to ignore updates when I do not want to update a particular program.
That said it did find all programs to be updated but only after changing options
The somewhat buggy error messages need to be sorted