Many people might go to their local newsagent to buy the local paper or industry magazine to keep on top of what is going on and see what is being reported. Others might visit news websites to find out what the latest news is and more again might flick on the radio and catch the report on their local station.

Of the above, some might do it as something to do, others use it as white noise and again others might rely on it during their busy day to find out what is happening in their community, their town, their state, their country. Now, where am I going with all this? Well, did you know that your computer also needs to be kept updated and find out the latest?

Your computer may not be interested in the local news and bits of gossip, but it definitely is interested in knowing about the latest viruses being developed, the latest spyware being deployed, how to avoid the latest security vulnerability or have that problem fixed with your word processor that occasionally mucks up your fonts and disrupts your table placement when someone else opens up the document.

The most critical of the above is probably looking for virus updates for your anti-virus programs. Here is one from the popular AVG Anti Virus:

Here is one you might see from the free Adobe Acrobat Reader:

It is important to update utility programs such as Adobe Acrobat Reader as your current version of the program may not have all the benefits and interactive abilities such as form editing and saving.

Many web browsers also have an auto update feature, such as Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla continually update and improve the Firefox web browser to fix bugs and improve operating speed and enhance your web browsing experience. Here is a notification that a new version of Mozilla Firefox is available:

Sun’s Java platform is also popular as it is needed for many software programs, and for enabling Java support in your web browser for sites and web-based applications that require it. Here the Java Web Start application is letting the user know that a newer version with updates, fixes and improvements is waiting to be installed:

In the next post, we will continue this mini-series with Part 2 looking at more common update notifications as well as some nasty and malicious ones you should avoid and ignore.