Update alerts- any benefits?

I am not able to understand the usefulness of these update alerts( signature updates, not the version). I wonder if anyone gets a benefit form theses.
For me i will either auto-update my scanner/ scanners or do it manually wheh needed. I will not bother to come in a forum and check for update alerts. Afterall these updates happen sometimes more than once in a day.

Sometimes I visist another forums where activity is not like wilders. there when I check for unread posts, I see nothing but update alerts mainly. That,s rather irritating.

Anything I am missing?

 

One advantage I can think of right offhand. Most software offering auto-updates (even if you can set it for notify-only) is set up to spread out notifications and/or installations over a period of time, several days or even a week or more, to even out server load. (Edit - this is typically true of program upgrades rather than defs updates.)

But if you need to know about an available update more or less immediately when it becomes available, your choices are essentially either do a manual check, or watch for notices on appropriate forums.

I agree that notification of defs updates, especially if they're frequent and auto-updates work well, is probably overkill compared with the same info for program upgrades. But don't forget that the free versions of some things, like Spyware Blaster or Ad-Aware, don't offer auto-updates so you have to periodically check manually and/or watch the forums.

 

I don,t mean version upgrades, that,s OK.
Anyway it,s a lot easier to click update manually on SpywareBlaster etc rather than go to a forum, check for update alerts and then try to update it.
It doesn,t make any sense to me.

 

I was just thinking it takes a lot of space and might be going on just as a tradition.

 

Ok, that makes a bit of sense though.