We all have programs on our computers that we want to keep up to date and either don’t have the time or feel a little nervous about updating them because we are afraid of what might happen. Alternatively, perhaps you have a need to install a bunch of useful programs after you have refreshed your computer? If either of these describe you, then I have the easy and safe answer for you – Ninite!
No, thats not a typing mistake, and I’m not wishing you a great nights sleep – it’s the name of a company that you can use to update or install your critical applications, nice and easily.
So, lets say that you want to install or update Skype, OpenOffice, Avast, Firefox, DropBox and Google Earth – you have two options. You can either go to each individual website and download the latest version of the software and manually go through the installation routine yourself (6 times in our example). Or you can use www.ninite.com and do it all in one go!
It really is that easy! Simply visit the website, place a tick in each of the programs that you want to either update or install and click on the “Get Your Ninite” button at the bottom. You will be given a small file to download. Just run this file and authorise its access to your computer and ninite will do the rest. It will check if you already have the program in question installed, if you do it will update it to the latest version. If you don’t, it will install the latest version. It works on all of the Windows operating systems back to Windows XP and if it fails to install something it will move on to the next program and then give you the option to retry the failed one. Ninite will also automatically figure out which version (32 or 64 bit) is best for your computer and it will install the right one and the other great thing is that by default it won’t install all of the annoying additional applications that you tend to end up with if you use the standard installation method.