Then Mozilla Thunderbird, then TortoiseGit, then TortoitseSVN, then Sublime Text Editor, then Notepad++, then Notepad++ informs me there is an update of a plugin that I never use, then VLC media player, then Google Chrome, then Oracle VirtualBox, then Visual Studio proudly announces a service pack, then Windows informs me that it wants to reboot in 10 minutes.

That is annoying! And one of the many reasons I am happy to have switched to Linux.

I strongly dislike the fact that almost every single piece of software wants to also install some kind of always running service to manage updates. It should be an OS hook that programs can use when they are first installed, and can be completely managed by the user if they care.

Like some kind of package manager?

On Windows? Good luck with that!

If you run windows and don't use Ninite yet, let me make your day:

https://ninite.com/updater/

http://chocolatey.org/

Open up a command prompt ...

  C:\> cup

... and done.

Ninite has an updater?

You made my day right now.

I have a Windows 7 PC but it is only used perhaps once every week or two (and usually for just a few minutes at a time). It's certainly not the best tool I've ever seen but Chocolatey [0] makes keeping (nearly all) my installed applications up-to-date very easy.

[0]: http://chocolatey.org/

Then Avast Antivirus pops up and says your software update status is critical! Do something or let me manage it for you (pay me) !

get a mac

Yea, get a mac just for that. Oh and please just forget that all present *nix based distros will have a similar, if not better, update manager.

Then Windows Update: "Your computer will restart in 10 minutes". Postpone 4 hours. Glad I'm on Ubuntu 99% of the time nowadays.

Is this at work?