Secunia PSI Discontinued

Today we are announcing the End-of-Life of Personal Software Inspector(PSI). This product will no longer be available from April 20, 2018.


There's a long thread over there about the decision to pull the product. Version 2 was the best, but it was discontinued months ago.

Does anyone here rely on 3rd party software to help keep your system up to date? I use Belarc Advisor and Patch My PC - along with Windows Update.

 

I used to use it. To many errors about programs that needed to be updated and they were up to date.

 

There is no need for such programs so why put yet another resource wasting man-in-the-middle? In fact, that's the real reason PSI is going away. Such tools are not needed, a waste of resources at best, and often report inaccurate information or cause unnecessary problems and headaches at worst.

I used to use Secunia PSI years ago with XP but dumped it when I migrated to W7 because all my important programs (including Windows itself and my security apps) already knew and know how to keep themselves updated faster and more accurately than any 3rd party app can. And all my other programs either (1) automatically keep themselves updated, (2) check for updates when started or (3) give me the option to manually check for updates.

Belarc Advisor is nice because it provides additional information. But I never use it to check for updates (except for its own updates). I recommend you dump Patch My PC. You don't need it for the same reason you don't need PSI.

 

In order to keep resources at a minimum, I disable automatic updates for many 3rd-party programs if the service is listed in CCleaner's startup database. Patch My PC doesn't run at startup and is not listed in CCleaner's startup database either, so that's a plus. With that said, there are some programs that Patch My PC offers to update, such as WaterFox, and I opt to use the .exe's built-in updater for that.

 

I disable all automatic 3rd party updaters, except for Malwarebytes Premium.

And I say since WaterFox has a built in updater (or at least checker), as to just about all other programs, IMO, that is just another reason to get rid of Patch My PC.

 

I love the convenience of Patch My PC. I can work on other things while the program does the updating. Otherwise, I'd have to re-enable some resource-using startup options for the 3rd-party programs. I could do a manual check for said programs, but I don't always remember to.

 

Resource using? Nah! Patch My PC must continually scan your computer to see what programs are there, then go out to each site to check for updates - even if you have not used some of those programs for months. Your 3rd party apps only need to go out to their respective site if you use the program then have it check for updates. Many of those programs, like Belarc for example, will check for you, but only when you start it. CCleaner provides a little Check for updates link in the lower right, which you can click, or not. If you just updated it yesterday, there's no need to check today.

And of course while it is good practice to keep our computers current, just because an update is out there, that does not mean it is necessary to install it immediately.

The only resource using issues are for those programs that try to install auto-updaters that run full time on our systems. If the program is not running full time, neither does an updater.

Use it if you want, but for sure, you don't need it.

 

FWIW:

ghacks.net > Secunia retires Personal Software Inspector (PSI)

 

Bill,

Patch My PC is a stand-alone app that does not run in the background to the best of my knowledge.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks for the link, SpywareDr.!

I agree with that closing statement. I mainly used version 3.0 for an extra set of eyes, but I rarely used its buggy update feature.

 

You're welcome!