How important is keeping your system up to date?

Hello all I’m back after another rather long hiatus. Anew Job and family matters have kept me away .Summer time seems to be a hard time for me to keep up my blogging so I apologize for the long time I have been gone. Recently I was visiting family and as usual I get asked to look at their computers that are acting up. I noticed a startling trend on each of the systems . All the systems had notifications in the system tray of updates that needed to be downloaded and installed. What is this system tray I speak of? Take a look at your computer screen now look in the bottom right hand corner. Yeah where you see the time displayed. That is what is commonly called the system tray and it does more than tell you the time. Some applications can put icons in the notification area to indicate the status of an operation or to notify the user about an event that needs your attention. If you have a newer system you may have to click on the little up arrow right next to the time to see the icons. Do You see a yellow triangle with and exclamation mark in it? Or any other icons that show yellow exclamation marks if so you need to update your system in some fashion. It may be you need to download and install a windows update or your antivirus program may need some attention. Ok go ahead and click on it and see what it says. It’s really easy just follow the instructions on the screen and let your system fix what it needs to fix, your system will run better and you will be more secure in your computing. Be sure to check the system tray periodically to see if there is anything that needs some attention(like service pack 1 that recently was released for windows 7.   If you have any question or a suggestion for a topic you would like me to cover just drop me a line and I will do it.