TechAirlines: Technology Tips

I receive CNET’s Downloads Dispatch Newsletters regularly and today, the headline was CNET’s New Beta Software known as CNET TechTracker.

For years, you’ve been begging for the return of CNET CatchUp, a Download.com program that helped track your software installations and informed you when new versions were available. It went the way of the dodo, but CNET has been working on a similar service and we’d like your feedback on it. Consider it CatchUp 2.0.

The description seemed very similar to a software I previously reviewed: VersionTracker Pro, except its free and its for software only. To download it, you must be logged into CNET. If you do not have an account, you may sign up for free. The download was a small 3.1 MB Nullsoft Installer file. After installing and TechTracker runs, it will open the TechTracker page on the CNET site and perform a scan of the software you have installed, then compares the installed version and the latest version on CNET Download.com.

The scan took about 2 minutes for me and out of the 13 software it tracked on my Windows 7 RC machine, 2 of them were out of date.

The list is in alphabetical order except the out of date software is listed first. Notice that it detected my Google Chrome version was 0.0.0.0. I guess it recognizes Chrome but not Version 3.0 Beta yet. Hovering over the name of any software gives you an editor’s rating and a user average rating.

Updating the software is just like downloading new one. Just click the Download Now button and it will take you straight to the download.

There are also a few options you can set, including if you want to add it to startup and check for software updates everytime.

Having the process run in the background took only 4 MB of RAM although I’m not really sure what it does all day in the background except just sit there waiting to update again, which is no less than every 4 hours (or manual).

Rating:

Performance: 4.5
Features: 3.9
Ease of Use: 4
Value for Money: 5
Appearance: 4
Overall Rating: 4.25
Learn how we rate the software

This is a new product/service from CNET and so far, it seems to work quite well. Seems to be very similar to FileHippo’s Update Checker except that of course, this checks with CNET’s database while UpdateChecker checks with FileHippo’s database.

Try CNET TechTracker for yourself and leave your thoughts in the comments

Keep in mind that this is BETA software so there may be some bugs and weird glitches. So far, the only one I’ve found was the incorrect version detection of Google Chrome.