[Rhaethe]

As an aside, I can sympathize with those who feel the need to do daily updates (even though I do not do so myself). I'm strongly in the realm of "if its not broke, don't fix it". Even to the extent of me not upgrading the OS on my machine to XP from 2000 until mid last year. And I'd probably not have if a particular game didn't require XP and above.

That being said, I spend a lot of time browsing the interwebs for a variety of things technical, just reading help forums and whatnot. I was also in a Tech Support job for a good piece of time.

And a lot of the time, if not most of the time, the advice given by the tech-savvy to the non-tech-savvy is "Keep your stuff updated." Adding caveats and situationals is not helpful. The non-tech-savvy just want their things to work. They don't wish to deal with something broken, so at least they practice what is considered by many to be good preventative maintenance ... by updating whenever a given update is available.

They use the maxim drilled into them for as long as they've owned a computer ... "Keep stuff updated or it will break eventually. And sometimes in a bad way." A maxim drilled into them by Microsoft, driver companies, other people on the Interwebs, etc etc ad infinitum.

So many times I have seen the following in Tech Support forums:

User: This isn't working anymore
Response: Make sure you're using latest version, then come back

Or variations along the same. Sometimes polite, sometimes not so much.

I know for a fact that on certain forums, if I happen to mention that I'm not using the latest and greatest NVidia drivers (even though I have no reason to ... the ones I have work just fine) I'll get branded as newb/scrub/dumb. I'm still not on the mutli-core platform. My single core works just fine. In certain places on the interwebs that is heresy. In the gaming demographics this behaviour is particularly prevelant ... having the latest and greatest and being cutting edge "is the only way to be".

In the end, you have masses of people conditioned by our own culture to be obssessive about making sure they have the latest version of everything.

Not saying it's right. Or wrong. It is what it is.

Of course, if only said people would have that attitude when it comes to updating IE, I'd be happier. I just want IE6 to die. Horribly. Forever. Of course, I'm only saying this because this morning I'm having to fix page code that works in every other browser *but* IE6. Again.

But I digress.