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Because the original programs don’t notify me. I have over 1,000 program components in Windows XP, over 600 in Windows 7 and over 250 in Windows 8. I get updates notices for only less than one percent of Windows XP program components, 5 percent of Windows 7 and ten percent of Windows 8 components from the original programs. Nir Sofer’s utilities, Microsoft Technet’s Sysinternals and many other utilities do not give notice, and do not have auto-updating for their components. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. And when a program like LibreOffice or NitroPDF Reader gives me a notice, it’s often weeks out of date. SUMo and other updaters give much more prompt notice, and can be used to update beta and DEV Channel versions of things like 7-ZIP, VLC Player and Chrome browser, for those of us who are experimenting with Windows 8 RP. Many, many reasons to use a single-source updates checker, once you learn what they can and cannot do for you.

I also have a few “stand-alone” or “portable” programs, like the Pegasus Mail email client, which are not installed programs at all, but updates checkers often do track them and can tell me when they are insecure or out of date. In these versions, these programs rarely have internal updates checkers.

SUMo and other well-behaved updates checkers do not run in the background. They scan on demand and then go online only at those times to check local versions vs their remote databases. PSI is unusual in that it does run in the background (although users can turn off this behavior — it does not have to Start With Windows –) and monitors constantly to keep users secure. Think of PSI as one more layer in your security defenses.

I have also found it useful to visit the FileHippo, DownloadCrew, and a couple other websites regularly. They note new versions of the software they track, and it’s a way for me to see what new versions are out there, then decide what to install.

For what it’s worth, I tried eM Client (free version, limited to 2 accounts, available here: http://www.emclient.com/) when I’d finally had it with Outlook. It imported everything flawlessly, and played very well with my gMail accounts. It’s simple to use, intuitive, and I love that it aggregates all my new mail in one folder.

I tried Thunderbird, and liked it a lot, but couldn’t make it work with my long list of gmail contacts, even though I mapped the fields, etc. repeatedly to import and tried every add-on that promised gmail contact synchronization. I still have it installed, just in case, but, for everyday use, the contact problem was a deal-breaker for me.

In the end, I bought eM Client and have not regretted it once. Their support, when I’ve requested it, has been prompt and very helpful.

Try it, you’ll like it.

If you use SUMo, be sure to download the .zip/.7z file or go directly to the “free of all sponsors download links” just below the list on KC Software’s download page. Doing either will avoid all the pitfalls mentioned in the article and allow you to use SUMo. If you do, you will like some of its detection features – its database stores far more software than even TechTracker’s. Updating using SUMo is a little tedious, but it’s a good addition to your arsenal.

I agree about PSI 3. Tried the beta, dumped it because of the lack of control. Tried it when it was released as final and dumped it because it really chewed up a huge percentage of my processor and interfered with everything else. I ended up reinstalling PSI 2.x, and running it on demand every week rather than on startup.