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Updates are files or collection of files that are needed by your current system or a particular application to increase reliability and performance. These files are offered by manufacturers to address and fix any errors, bugs and flaws or adding additional capabilities from the time their software was first released. It can be downloaded through the Internet for free or pay a minimal fee for shipping and handling if you want a backup copy on a floppy disk or on a CD-ROM.
Updates come in sizes and how they function on an application that is being updated.
Virus updates or virus definition updates are offered by anti-virus vendors to update their applications' virus definitions to identify new viruses so that it can be detected and deleted.
Smaller updates such as security fixes, patches, critical & recommended updates and hot fixes tend to update a certain part or area of an application.
Service packs are collection of previous small updates, security and critical updates that fixes a whole application. But a service pack does take up disk space. It is usually sized at 10MB or more (For example, Microsoft's Office 2000 Service Pack 1a is 50MB plus and Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 is 100MB plus). Although it is huge, it is better to install these kinds of updates because it is made-up of a single file to update an application (rather than finding and installing updates file by file) and it was thoroughly tested.
Updates may even add additional commands and capabilities to a hardware. Updating your PC's BIOS and drivers will add support for newer hardware technologies and fix any hardware related problems.
But be careful on installing updates. Sometimes it may introduce new problems rather
than fixing it. Read its accompanied support papers and other technical notes to know if there are known issues with other applications when the update is applied and if your system 'really' needs an update.
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