Patch My PC

Patch My PC allows you to know which programs on your PC need updating. It was designed to work in portable mode – thus, it is not installable and can be executed directly on any PC.

The program is very lightweight, and it includes several sections accessible through a tabbed system. You can use Patch My PC totally free of charge.

The tool does not retrieve a full list of the programs installed on your system. Instead, Patch My PC works with a fixed list of programs that commonly require updating. This list includes Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Player, Mozilla Firefox, and iTunes, to mention only some of the most representative examples. Besides, this tool uses a color code to identify the status of your programs – red for the outdated programs, green for the up-to-date ones, and black for those that are not installed on your system.

Other sections of the program allow you to skip checking any of the items in the “Common” programs tab, and to watch a list of all the programs that launch at startup. You can enable, disable or delete any of the entries on this list. Furthermore, Patch My PC includes an "Uninstaller" section, which allows you to directly remove any program installed on your system.

I should mention that the program does not retrieve the true last version available for the programs to be updated. It only compares the version numbers of your installed software tools with those in its internal definitions file. Unfortunately, this definitions file cannot be updated, which means that you will need to download any new version of the program to keep your applications updated in an effective way.