It never worked for me so I actively disabled the startup entry in the end. Generally you find out sooner on the avast forums when there is an update available 
Same here. About the only improvement I'm aware Sun ever made with their updates was finally, a few versions back, over-installing into a single fixed folder rather than their old method of adding a new folder for each update so you wound up with umpteen old versions. Which meant, of course, that you were still stuck with any vulnerabilities in those and had to uninstall them before installing the new one to be safe.
Give Sun a little credit ... every few years they do manage to move on to the next item in the wishlists. 
Well I have always had the auto-updater set to check once a month and always depended on that to keep me updated. It never failed although I guess I didn't always get the updates as soon as they were released. I would always get a notification in the system tray eventually
. You never had to uninstall the old versions to be safe though back when the listing in add/remove would remain. You would always be using the latest update no matter how many previous ones were listed. You could also uninstall the old ones after installing a newer one without any problems, I did it many times.
BTW, the updater still says I have the latest version. I think they push out the auto updates on a phased basis by location like many other vendors do so I'm sure I'll get it eventually. I've never had a problem waiting for the notifications before updating.
