automatic and semi-automatic updates

[David Feldman]

I'm running Hoary with Xfce, and overall I've got it working great. I'm 
wondering, though, about what my options are for configuring automatic 
or semi-automatic system updates:

- I notice that in GNOME update-notifier runs with some options, so I 
added that to my Xfce session (though I don't know what the options 
are). But it takes up a lot of space in the system tray, even though no 
updates are available. Any way to avoid that?

- Are there other options for notification of available updates? Some 
way to flash an icon somewhere or present a dialog?

- I saw some docs regarding fully-automated updates with cron-apt and 
apt-get. If I'm going to be installed updates anyway, is that a safe 
thing to do?

- As far as fully-automated updates go, the person who uses this 
machine will have it turned off much of the time. Will a root cron job 
run at startup if its time has been missed, or would it make more sense 
to just run update-manager when the user logs in? Is there a way to run 
update-manager so that it only actually launches if updates are 
available?

Thanks.
--Dave