I’ve been using InstallPad for a few months now to automatically download the latest version of software installer to my USB flash drive. I always carry the latest version of useful software such as Spybot, AVG, Avast!, Avira, Firefox, Autoruns and many more that is able to help me during my work. Let’s say a my friend’s computer lacks of an antivirus software, instead of wasting both our time in downloading it, I can just install from my USB flash drive.

InstallPad works but it is a pretty old software that did not update since October 2006. I could continue using it but I’ve found a better one called Ketarin which has more powerful features such as integration with FileHippo, a website that keeps track of the latest version of many software.

Ketarin is a small application which automatically updates setup packages. As opposed to other tools, Ketarin is not meant to keep your system up-to-date, but rather to maintain a compilation of all important setup packages which can then be burned to disc or put on a USB stick.

Ketarin Auto Checks Latest Software Setup

Basically, it monitors the content of web pages for changes and downloads files to a specified location. There is a tutorial explaining it all. Currently, you can either rely on a service based on FileHippo, or you can define your own rules, even using regular expressions (for advanced users).

Before you can use Ketarin to check and auto download latest software packages, you’ll have to set it up first. Setting up the list of software that needs to be checked can be a headache but if the software exists in FileHippo, it is going to be very easy. What you need to do is to click the “Add new application button”. At the New Application window, enter the name of the software, select FileHippo ID and enter the URL of the software on FileHippo. Finally, select where you want the file to be downloaded to. You can check this article for more detailed steps.

It also has advanced features where you can set Ketarin to automatically delete previously downloaded file to save space when a newer version has been downloaded, spoofing HTTP referrer and also executing custom commands before and/or after downloading. The list of files that are to be checked for update can be also shared to your colleague or friend by exporting the database (jobs.db) file. Make sure you have Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and above installed in order to run Ketarin.

[ Download Ketarin ]

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