Has everyone running XP downloaded all the updates?
How exactly do they effect XP and how important are they?
 It seems like I have read a lot of posts in various forums about the updates causing problems, since I've had my new machine I haven't downloaded any of them.
The reason I am asking about it is because I was watching The screen savers tonight and it was mentioned that having the updates installed would offer a good deal of protection against the bugbear virus.
 Would I need all the updates or just the files relative to security and vulnerability?
 I've been to the download site and read the descriptions, but first I thought maybe I could get some insight from you guys in regards to this issue.

  I actually don't know anything about firewalls, how do they work and what product do you suggest?

there's a program called "XP-antispy",where you can turn some of microsofts "spying applications" off.

Lemme tell you a little story about a recent experiment. Bear in mind that I only have

900 Duron
512M Ram
64M vid card

I read a previous post here about one of the updates that slows Xp to a crawl. I uninstalled it and got dramatic improvement in my frame rates.

I had to reinstall XP for a different reason, so I got this brilliant idea. Dual boot with no updates or progs. I partitioned my HD, Installed XP on one and put all my stuff back on from my backup, progs, firewall etc.

On the other partition I installed XP - and did not get a single update - not one! I installed CFS3 and FS2k2 on this same partition. Nothing else. Nothing! Not one other prog - oops - one - Maxmem. BTW - if I go on the net I use the other XP.

Yes I know - no firewall - but I wanted to see what it would do.

In FS2k2 I have the USA Mesh, over 200 aircraft in my file, trees add-on, river texture add-on, water texture add-on, regions of the world buildings add-on.

I have the weather set with 4 thick layers of clouds and thunderstorms with heavy rain. The lowest layer is at 15K ft.

All sliders are set at the max. I am now running at 23-38 fps. As long as I stay below 13K feet. If I get up to 15k ft the cloud details slow me to 8 or 10 fps. I can live with that - on clear days I can go as high as I want - my choice. I can turn some sliders down - stay low - or have a clear sunny day  - or put the clouds at 45k ft.