A New Year's Resolution, and Some Tools to Help

2011 is ending with a flurry of software update activity:

• Microsoft- a large number of critical and important updates
• Adobe- ditto
• Apple- ditto
• All apps- end of year updates

Make it a New Year's resolution, and don't put it off, to bring all your applications current + create a backup of your updated system.  I have some tool recommendations for

• Creating a computer inventory list of all system and installed applications, as well as all software keys.  A list of all hardware is also provided  
• Updating and establishing an automatic schedule for future updates for your Microsoft products.
• Identifying and updating your installed apps; creating an automatic alert mechanism.
• Updating apps and the operating system for Apple.
• Full backup of all system and applications files (doesn't include YOUR documents, music, etc, which should be backed up in other ways)

Each of these recommendations is long enough to be a blog entry in itself, so watch for subsequent entries.