I decline the offer of anything I don't understand or don't see as necessary to improve my "user experience".

While this would be an excellent claim to include in your application to participate on the "Dick Cheney Science Advisors" committe (but omit everything after the first "or" if applying to be an evangelical creationist) it seems questionable with respect to Microsoft Automatic Updates.

Automatic Update will automatically install only Critical Updates. To be a Critical Update both Microsoft and essentially the entire community of anti-malware professionals must agree that a vulnerability has been confirmed, that it is known - or likely very soon to be known - to malware distributors, and that a significant population of users are at risk if the vulnerability is not removed.

When/if you decline to install a Critical Update except for specifically known and confirmed reasons that apply to your unique hardware/software environment, you are asserting that you are smarter than the entire community of anti-malware professionals.

When you decline to install a Critical Update, you also are making the more dangerous assertion that you are "too smart" to be affected by anyone with malicious intent who might attempt to exploit that vulnerability. There is some contention that "anyone" may include at least a couple of National Government Agencies/Agents, not all of whom are as ignorant of computers as "official agencies" in the US.

While that certainly may be true in your individual case, it's unlikely to be the case for the majority of people who assert (without authenticating) your same credentials; and advocating this as a policy that most others should follow probably overestimates their ability to be as smart as you are.

Most of those other users won't know how to check for White Papers at Microsoft and at reputable Anti-Malware distributors (like you do), won't know how to check with the Microsoft Tech Net (like you do) for details, or won't bother to do so. They' just look at some random blog where some SPGWK will babble about the evils of Microsoft.

When you opt for Custom Install, you will also see "Optional Updates." There will be many of these that will not be useful to the majority of users, and most people don't need to be as smart as you to know which ones are not necessary. "Reasonable user competence" may be required to make all of the optimal choices there, but there should be none that will make a critical difference. NONE OF the Optional Updates will be installed by Automatic Update or by Express Install, so if these are what you're declining you might as well just turn on Autmatic Update in Automatic Install mode.

John