With the number of apps I'm downloading steadily on the rise, I'm always on the lookout for tools to simplify the process for me. QWinApt aims to give us poor Windows users a utility with the same killer functionality of Linux's Synaptic package manager. It's a great idea, and an improvement from Win-get (which Brad reviewed in 2007), but it's still not quite up to par with its Linux cousins.

Getting QWinApt running requires two small downloads, the core app itself and wget to actually do the downloading. Extract them both to the same folder, launch the executable and you're on your way. All that's left is to choose a location for your downloads, and the package manager will open.

The graphical frontend is clean and simple (we'll overlook grammar and spelling - it's free, right?) and breaks down applications into main categories. Those categories are repeated in your download folder, so when you check an app (or apps) and hit apply, they'll download into the matching folder.

Then you're on your own. Unlike Linux the installers won't launch silently, you'll have to soldier through them yourself, which is QWinApt's biggest limitation. If you maintain an app store on a file server, however, it does offer a simple way to bulk download a number of good quality apps without having to visit dozens of different websites.