I had the latest version of Flash on Maxthon 4.9 and it was the worst version ever to use, so I went back to and installed Maxthon 4.4 and that has an older version on it. Works just fine, meter is much better, so I shan't worry there.
Other browsers are set to update automatically, so they should be fine. I am not a computer expert and all this talk of backing up this and doing that is quite confusing. My eldest son who is very computer savvy read all this thread and checked my computer over, and I have all the stuff I need and more already installed.
I do wonder at times whether all this scary stuff is necessary, from what I have heard most people are careful with what they do on their computers. But I suppose there will always be doom and gloom mongers here as anywhere else.