As a Linux user, keeping programs up to date or even bleeding edge is very easy. Plus I usually refresh the operating system every six months as a new version comes out. Work is a different story. We use Windows XP on all the machines and I generally try to keep the systems very stable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like a fine Linux distribution like Ubuntu, where all the programs are kept up-to-date through the standard repositories or the fantastic PPA archives.
I’ve used Secunia’s website many times for research papers or curiosity and just recently noticed their Personal Software Inspector. I tried it out of curiosity and it was amazing how many programs were astoundingly out-of-date. Software I use frequently usually has an auto-updater or notifier (Firefox, Pidgin, OpenOffice, etc), but there’s a lot of little ones I either don’t use often or don’t think to check for upgrades.
Not only does Secunia’s PSI scan your entire system and tell you what needs to be updated, they also make it very easy to fix, having options to directly download the new version and other niceties. It can also start at boot and actively monitor software changes. Also, pretty graphs and statistics.
Secunia PSI