Appget - user-run software update program

[TrueSatan]

I'll add that the Secunia product senses additional drives and not yet installed downloads showing that these are possibilities that could be added to AppGet...all in all however it is an excellent product and I thank the author for his hard work as well as look forward to new versions with the suggested improvements mentioned in this topic.

[J-Mac]

Downloaded and installed.  Great application!

Thanks jozy!

Jim

[Darwin]

Still haven't tried this - will download and do so now. Neglected to mention in my earlier post (it was quite brief!) that I didn't keep Secunia around for long. It kept botherin me to uninstall no longer developed/supported software and there was no way to disable it from running in the system tray other than to kill it via Task Manager.

[Curt]

Darwin, your post confused me. I have Secunia running ("Secunia PSI is monitoring your software"), and I also have 1 'end-of-life' program installed. Secunia will tell me when I ask it, but it has never been "botherin me to uninstall".

[Darwin]

Well... maybe I got a little carried away  When installed, Secunia does as you say - it tells me after a scan that I've got "end-of-life" software installed and suggests that I uninstall it. The biggie for me is having it in the tray with no way to turn it off. I really don't see the point of having it run all the time.

[justice]

I agree and uninstalled that too but they're looking for feedback so it might be worth sending feedback.

[Darwin]

I agree and uninstalled that too but you're looking for feedback so that might be worth it.

-justice (August 28, 2007, 10:35 AM)

Yeah, that thought has occurred to me - I should write to them about this - it's the whole point of the beta!

[Curt]

 Create a custom software update notifier

One of the most common things that I’ve been getting asked is how people can stay up-to-date on the latest software. I got really excited about the free UpdateStar application which I mentioned last week, but it still didn’t have information on a lot of the software that I used.

There are hundreds of sites out there that provide RSS feeds for downloads, and I began to think to myself that there had to be a good way to use some of those feeds to my advantage. Then Yahoo! Pipes came to mind since I had just used that last week to show how to translate RSS feeds, and it works perfectly in this situation.

–Overview–
What we’re going to do with Yahoo! Pipes is combine several feeds from popular download sites into one central feed. I recommend a handful of sites at the end of this article that should offer exactly what you’re looking for.

Then we’re going to use Yahoo! Pipes to sift through every item in each of the feeds, and pull out only the items that interest us. Because of the nature of Yahoo! Pipes it will only take a second to go back and add more things to watch for, so don’t worry if you forget to put an app on the list to be monitored.

-CyberNotes

–Instructions–

CyberNet Technology Newsmail's instructions on Yahoo! Pipes, at:
>> http://cybernetnews....are-update-notifier/ <<

+ http://pipes.yahoo.com/ 

[justice]

There's a lot to like about Appget.
It's listing of installed software is exhaustive, the developer is enthousiastic.
The program works well with good information!

However the quality of the information lets down Appget, users don't fill in download urls (which can only be added when software is up to date -- imho this is too late i am not interested in maintaining this info anymore at that point). Getting version info from product version strings proves unreliable.

According to the appget.nl website there's a new version coming sometime this month. It looks promising -- mor work is done on the server.
The problem I see on my system is unfortunately that it looks like appget will never get close to getting my pc up to date. This is because version numbering is not uniform and there are too much different systems around.

Vista versions being higher than xp versions of the same product
alpha / beta / release canditates
secret forum versions
registration only versions
version strings with languages in them
developers following 7.9 with 7.10
comparing 7.10 with 7.1.0

It's a nightmare. That's why DcUpdater works so well it not just looks at versions but also at release dates, with official information from the developer instead of guessing from version strings.

I'm not sure how it works behind the scene, there's definately scope to make this work.
Version system templates, then applying them to products, maybe with some intelligence comparison  / user voting -- could potentially solve it.
Allowing people to fill in download urls anytime.
Importing download info from download managers.

[J-Mac]

Justice,

I just updated to AppGet 0.6.9 and it wasn't easy!  Kept telling me I had to update for it to work - I updated four times but the old version kept starting. I checked Program Files and the agrun.exe and apget.ini are not updated with the rest of the program. Even uninstalling AppGet does not remove those - and they run in the background. I had to delete them manually for the update to 0.6.9 to take.

Next, I now have 152 applications that need updating. Not really, but that's what this version of AppGet is reporting. It's claiming some really weird version numbers are available when there are no such versions. Also - in some cases - it is pulling version numbers for SDK versions instead of regular versions, and some I can't figure out where it got the "new" version numbers but they don't exist in a lot of cases. Many of the programs that the previous version of AppGet said were updated now say they are not and cite non-existent version numbers as available.

Something is definitely not working in the latest version.

Thanks.

Jim

[justice]

I can confirm the updating problems but I think it occurred because appget closes to the system tray. Manually exiting it from there and then updating solved the problem for me.

Can also confirm the version numbering problems. At the moment I am using FileHippo + DcUpdater but clearly I am missing out on a lot of software updates.

[J-Mac]

Thanks justice.

BTW, I had closed AppGet fully - the process was no longer running. However a process called agrun.exe had apparently not closed.  That stayed even after uninstalling AppGet. Weird.

Jim