OK, so I’m slightly obsessive about making sure my PC is up to date. There used to be a great Cnet application called Catchup which scanned your PC for the software you had installed and checked for updates – and helped you download them via Cnet’s own download.com. Seemed a clever strategy – then they killed it. Anyone know why? And if there’s a similar service now? Some of my shareware and freeware is depressingly out of date.

That said – there are a couple of dangers with this model, I guess. Firstly, that Cnet could be collecting and transmitting all sorts of dodgy information about you (as MS no doubt does with its newfound ‘Microsoft Update’) – and second, that some of the updates could contain spyware (as the new version of of my fave video player, BSPlayer did :().

Still, I liked the convenience of it. My IBM laptop has a handy utility that does that for me, but the useless Dell desktop update utility just keeps telling me that ‘I could be vulnerable to the latest phishing threats.’ Not really a concern.