Lately I have seen a lot of people not updating there software packages, or not staying up to date with technology. This is a bad thing! Once you stop trying to stay up to date everything will catch up with you very fast and you won't be able to recover
I have seen lots of people still stuck in Photoshop 7 or Illustrator 10. I have seen teachers teaching technology that ceased to exist 8 years ago. Teachers that say that Macromedia brings out upgrades of Director to fast so just stop updating.
This is bad, very very bad! Especially if you are a teacher, cause teachers have to teacher there students stuff that is up to date and relative. If they do not then what happens if the students don't learn anything new from the point on? They will start lagging behind even more, maybe even 20 years and this is not affordable in the modern world of internet!
Print companies are just as bad, they lag behind at least 7 years. Lots of them still work in OS 9 and some of them still work in OS 7 and a version of Photoshop 4 or 5 (All to old to actually find out what year they where from).
Starting to slip
Make sure you don't start to slip. When you do start lagging behind a few versions it will be much harder to adopt the new ones. And when that happens you won't be able to function correctly in the modern computer based world.
What should I do?
If you use a software package more that once a week you should upgrade straight away. A year later is definitely not straight away! With straight away I mean the same month as it comes out or the next but not much more.
If you only use something once a month then it is affordable to lag behind a bit more, but you should still look around to see if there is a new version once in a while.
Why I can work with older versions fine
No you can't! Not compared to how you can work with a newer version. Newer versions will speed up your work flow and help you deliver better work.
More tips
If you use a software package from day to day, look around to see if there are any good alternatives. You definitely don't want to be working on something for hours when it can be done in minutes with another software package (This is especially aimed at people who still use Quark and haven't switched to InDesign).
Update or die
The day I stop updating is the day I die or the day I retire and no sooner!