I usually avoid updating my software till the very last second. I tend to go by the phrase that if it aint broke, dont fix it and so it takes me a long time to upgrade. Also i will only upgrade if there is a really good reason to. I think i have an old school mind somehow.
I thought that you were referring to software patches the 1st time that I read your post. Well I also don't tend to upgrade pc software in general once I have installed them, I don't make it a point to have the latest version installed unless it causes errors, crashes or other problems.
Most updates suck I had blender installed some 3D software on my PC and it was working fine. Then when an update was released and the software auto-updated itself it started crashing, Anytime I tried to run the program, it would crash. Continuously. I had to give up on using the software. So I guess unless it's really important, I definitely won't update any software on my PC.
Wait, I'm confused. Are we supposed to talk about updates here or upgrades? With regards to updates, I turn off the automatic updates immediately when I acquire a new laptop or PC. I hate it when I would shut down the computer only to get stuck because an update would commence before shut down. As for upgrades, well, I purchase upgrades when I have money.
I don't mind updates that much, but I also tend to put them off to the last minute as much as I can because I'm also a bit worried about certain programs not working anymore or just getting bugs in general whereas I already had a perfectly running machine before. However, I do still try to check if the update is needed, since sometimes it is necessary to correct some security issues. There was an iOS update just recently, for example, that corrects certain security holes in the software, supposedly making your devices vulnerable to local interception if you were using public wi-fi. I think it's best to check first at least, since sometimes the updates are well within reason.
Software updates are either a hit or a miss, some updates have drastic changes to the software being updated but most of them are just tiny almost unnoticeable upgrade. On my Android device, every time that updates notification comes out, I just swipe it away, I rarely update apps and I only update apps that I really use but also with regards to the update notes. But the one software that I dread to update, and it pisses me off when it does, is Windows. Yes, I hate Windows update. It takes too long to download even the smallest update and it requires you to restart your computer every time. In fact, just an hour ago, I received a Windows 8.1 update and once its installed, I had to restart my laptop three times to be able to make it work again (the recent update froze my system) And also, I hated iTunes updates, good God don't get me started on that.
Some software are really annoying, they want to update all the time and what's the point in that? I do the windows updates, but browser and other software updates I think twice before doing it because I've updated software sometimes and the newer version was actually worse than the one before.
Since I know my way around a computer I simply disable all updates and chose myself when and what to update. More than once it happened that an update broke things instead of fixing so I learned my lesson. Sometimes features are removed or replaced with an update and I might need them. This is why with some software I have old versions that I haven't updated in ages. If you mean upgrades, those are rare too. I can't afford to buy new software constantly so I go the cheap route and wait until the price drops.
The only software that I update is the antivirus. I rarely upgrade the others. Sometimes it is just because I might have cracked them to be full version so updating make them to be limited version again. And sometimes I just want to use the old version.