Windows Updates - All In One!
I don't know about you but I would rather stop eating for three days instead of having to reinstall Windows on my computer (currently I use Windows XP and Vista Ultimate but I spend most of my time using the good old XP as most people I know do). Why am I saying this? Well if I leave aside all those programs I am currently using and the restarts needed to install drivers... there's something even more scary - Windows updates!
If you think Windows updates are not scary just try to update the .NET Framework manually and you'll get the idea... after a few hotfixes! If I think well I can say that updating the .NET framework in Windows XP is even more frustrating than using Windows Vista with User Account Control turned on and I am not joking at all when I say it unfortunately...
Now considering all the above wouldn't be great to have an AIO file with those "must have" Windows updates? As long as it gets the job done I don't mind if it has a Chinese interface... but fortunately All in One Runtimes only seems to come in German. Trust me - you don't have to know a single German word to use this updates package successfully - all you need is about 500 MB of free space on your Windows drive (or the temporary drive if you messed with the Windows settings and set some folder on another partition to be used for storing temporary files) and 7-Zip to unpack the downloadable package you have chosen.
To make the last phrase of the previous paragraph clear as Bora Bora's water let me tell you there are two All in One Runtimes packages available one for Windows 2000 XP and Server 2003 x86 and one for Windows x64 including Windows 7.
The thing that makes All in One Runtimes worth downloading is the .NET Framework and all those countless hotfixes I was telling you about earlier but there's even more to this AIO package since you'll also get the latest DirectX 9.0c Adobe Flash Player 10 Shockwave Player 11.5.0.596 Java Runtime Environment 6 Visual C++ Runtimes an even Microsoft Silverlight 3.0! Installing them is as easy as possible; in fact you can only unpack the executable package and then do nothing! Go out and have a beer then get back to your updated Windows OS - how cool's that? :)
Finally I should thank Raymond for discovering this software treasure. I really enjoy discovering things on my own but this time I must give credits to the man so... Thank you very much Raymond! ;)