Sumo. Software Update Monitor for windows.

I have just been looking at update monitors for windows.

I am not interested in auto-update features (that is tools that can download and automatically install), just in the functionality to notify.

Appget installed fine, but when I ran the first scan, I found it listed lots of pre-release software which I was not prepared to download/install. There was also a few false positives and missed a few apps. The gui was not easy to use and lots of missing download links for updates.

UpdateStar did not install correctly, it installed in my profile/appdata folder, which is not acceptable. It also detected the least programs installed AND created the most false positives, making it by far the worst performer on my machine.

Sumo performed the best, only a few missing apps (but no false positives like with Appget and Updatestar) and a clean simple easy to use GUI. Ability to choose to use or ignore beta software and also ignore Microsoft software (great if you use windows built in update tools) are great options. Unlike the other tools it was not uninstalled in 10 minutes of using it and this one will stay. The only thing missing is some kind of scheduling, but I currently have a weekly reminder set to do this task manually.

Of course a long way to go before we get the maturity of using a Linux distro with a tool like Synaptic