SUMo

I'm using SuMo since a long time. At first - de facto SuMo Lite is update checker, it's not update installer. "Installing update" means going to the author website, where application shows Google results for application name. Only full version can download updates. But even with only checking, it does its job very well and I think it's the best from its kind.

It's also kind of community based - if there's some mistake in software database, author in most cases fixes it quickly after report. That's very important in my opinion, because in such big database there's always some mistake. The problem is reporting system - you need to wrote mail to the author.

SuMo works well both as background application and when ran manually. That's good for me, as nowadays many apps want to be on all the time and they are hogging our resources - 30 MB RAM here, 50 MB there and we suddenly loose 2 GB of RAM on background apps. SuMo doesn't follow the schema of scaring users - you need to have 5 cleaners, 3 update checkers and 6 antiviruses all the time and you have to react instantly. No. You check updates when you want to check it, and if you need for some reason constant update checking, you can keep SuMo in tray. It's all your choice.

I'd say it's rather not for total newbies. Total newbie would know what to update from the often big list and also how one updates applications. I think it's best fitting for these who can decide by themselves - moderate and power users who knows purpose of installed applications and who knows if it's worth to update certain application or not.

My score in Polish Standard Scale:

• 4 of 6 kielbasas (general)
• 5 of 6 paczkis (in its class)
• 6 of 6 wódkas (comparing to existing applications in its class)

Pros:

• very good database
• very lightweight - after checking updates, peak memory usage is 26 MB (with 350 checked applications; very short peak) and average/idle is about 5 MB (sic!)
• supports checking both stable versions and unstable
• also checks .exe libraries bundled with tools (e.g. exiftool)
• ability to check version statistics which can be very helpful. E.g. if there's version 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 3.0, and 60% of users are still using 1.5, then probably update is not worth in some cases.
• fast searching for new software, even in precise mode; moderate speed of checking updates
• very clean design without any eye-candy - just pure data in the grid
• a few methods of scanning software - I don't know exactly which, but I know it can check registry or just crawl file system and get embedded info from .exe files

Cons

• Lite version only checks for updates, it doesn't install it
• it even can't update itself and downloading new version have to be done carefully as author provides also installers with aware. It's not hidden, tho - author is sincere with that
• ancient system of reporting mistakes in database - it opens mail client where you have to write with your words what's wrong
• ignore lists tend to disappear
• it blocks app when it's checking for updates, so we can't check results during progress
• "critical update" is misleading - it just means "increment in major version number"
• checking third party libraries can be misleading for novices, because not all libraries can be updated without damage to the application that uses it
• some important for me applications aren't in the database, but they are rather popular with power users than average users - it doesn't recognize e.g. ffmpeg and ImageMagick, at least for me
• total lack of product branches. E.g. there's 2.x branch, I've app v2.1 and there's v2.2 update, also there's 3.x branch. SuMo will keep telling us that 3.x is the newest, not 2.2.
• sometimes it's reporting driver updates, which in my opinion should be removed from database, as SuMo is also lacking hardware tests and often newer version is just a version for different hardware

[Edited by krzysiu, May 08]

[Edited by krzysiu, May 08]

Dozens of my programs are maked as outdated, but after manual check 90% are at the newest version. Update-download from the SuMo website failed "0 results found". SuMo finds new versions of software were the last developers update was 10 years ago.. not even the dev knows about this new version ;)