Keep Programs Patched with Secunia PSI

One of the annoyances of PC ownership is keeping all of those 3rd party applications up-to-date.  Outdated applications can lead to incompatibilities, less functionality and security vulnerabilities. Windows keeps some Microsoft programs updated via "Windows Update" but, unlike Linux, there is no way to add program libraries to the automatic updater on a Windows machine. Until Microsoft develops a better way to integrate updates into the operating system, users are stuck relying on each individual application to check for updated versions of itself, or worse, periodically manually checking for program updates.  


However, there is an alternative.  Personal Software Inspector (PSI) from Secunia is a free download for Windows that keeps track of the applications running on your machine and alerts you if patches are required.  PSI runs in the system tray and lets you know (via tray notification) if something has changed on your system.
  

PSI sports a high-level dashboard showing the overall state of your system with historical graphs dating back several weeks:

Also included are detailed views on all applications detected that PSI is able to keep track of:

...and browser plug-ins:

Secunia PSI also knows where the updates for unpatched programs are located, and places a link to the update page under the detected application in the "insecure" tab:

Personally, I like to set PSI to launch at Windows startup, and also to un-tick the box that says "Show only "Easy-to-Patch" programs" in order to see as much data about my unpatched apps as possible, and to make sure that I'm notified of any change to my computer in near real-time:

I've been running Secunia PSI on my PC's for nearly a year, and have been very pleased.  It is fairly unobtrusive, and has allowed me to keep my apps updated much more quickly and without as much forethought as would be required without it.

Got an idea for a topic? E-mail me at toptoad@techonadime.net.