Cytherian
Vista Guru
At the behest of a veteran member here, I installed Secunia PSI to see how it works and if my system would benefit.
Well, it was very adept at scanning all of the software I have installed and informing me if it was up to date or not. But what I found a bit annoying is that it does not care for end-of-life products. Any software that isn't on the "active" list for updates is flagged. Just because a software application is old doesn't mean it is any more vulnerable than a later version. Anyway, I was able to find a rules section where you can have the PSI ignore certain folders.
It's really interesting how it found newer updates to software I had recently updated myself. I wonder how this software works. I'm guessing that Secunia keeps a massive software database that is frequently updated and PSI just does a check-up with it and compare the version numbers, as well as the paths for downloading the latest updates. Very convenient!
I have a habit of turning off automatic updates on all of my installed software, except for mission critical programs like anti-virus and Windows updates. Why? Because I don't want things launching and performing downloads when I'm in the middle of doing something and start to suffer from performance issues. So, I just periodically run checks myself, or set software to check for updates but request acknowledgement to download before doing it.
Well, it was very adept at scanning all of the software I have installed and informing me if it was up to date or not. But what I found a bit annoying is that it does not care for end-of-life products. Any software that isn't on the "active" list for updates is flagged. Just because a software application is old doesn't mean it is any more vulnerable than a later version. Anyway, I was able to find a rules section where you can have the PSI ignore certain folders.
It's really interesting how it found newer updates to software I had recently updated myself. I wonder how this software works. I'm guessing that Secunia keeps a massive software database that is frequently updated and PSI just does a check-up with it and compare the version numbers, as well as the paths for downloading the latest updates. Very convenient!
I have a habit of turning off automatic updates on all of my installed software, except for mission critical programs like anti-virus and Windows updates. Why? Because I don't want things launching and performing downloads when I'm in the middle of doing something and start to suffer from performance issues. So, I just periodically run checks myself, or set software to check for updates but request acknowledgement to download before doing it.
My Computer
System One
-
- Manufacturer/Model
- HP Pavillion dv5t
- CPU
- Intel Core Duo 2.53GHz
- Memory
- 4Gb
- Graphics card(s)
- NVidia GeForce 9600M GT 512Mb
- Screen Resolution
- 1280x800 32bit
- Hard Drives
- Seagate Momentus XT 500Gb Hitachi Travelstar HTS543225L9A300 250Gb
- Mouse
- Microsoft 4000