There are many cases how one is using virtual machines. For me it’s testing my applications on different systems. Otherwise I do not actively work with VM. So all article is about my use case. I don’t know what is the best way to deal with updates in VMs. I just found what is suitable for me.

Regarding “Updated Intall” snapshot: Yes, you are certailny correct that it won’t be up-to-date in a nearly future. From this point of view it is wrongly picked name. It’s a way I tended to deal with system updates. As I start VM only occasionally and do not use it regulary I do not care about the any updates. I just want to start VM, test something and that’s it. I do not want to see dozens of notifications about updates being available. Windows actually starts them downloading on the background by default which is undesired.

On the otherside I want the VM OS being relatively stable. Without any after-birth bugs which are common. Therefore I update VM once after installing OS and that’s it. No more updates after. Hence the “Updated Install”.

I do not install latest versions of applications into this snapshot because sometimes it is useful to start VM without any software installed. Also one must not forget that even applications get updates. I tend to ignore them too.