or is that a little too risky in 2021?
I wouldn't worry about it too much, man. I could type at least ten paragraphs as to why it's pretty much a fallacy to have the latest and "greatest" right now. I've only used about 5 updates for hardware and software since I ran Windows 98se. I never committed myself to patch Tuesday. No hoodie wearing hacker ever got in, no malware, any of that. As I said, I could write at least ten paragraphs on this. The bottom line are these three points:
1) Get in the habit of scanning ALL downloads at Virus Total. And I really do mean ALL.
2) Check out the now free and open source program called Sandboxie. Run that for your browser. Might want to do the same for your email client. But proper email client configuration is beyond the scope of this thread.
3) Make periodic full 1:1 disk clones to an external hard drive. If things go south, clone back. It'll be like hardly anything ever changed.
Last but not least, it's really all on how you use the Internet. If you have a tendency of browsing shady sites, using the Piratebay, etc, expect bad things to happen. If you know what you're doing then it's not an issue.
Should you have updates? Yes and no. You should have the criticals and nothing more unless it solves a hardware or software issue. As I said, I have maybe five installed and I've never had any issues.
I feel this whole idea of having to have updates is a way to get you onto a new OS. And Microsoft didn't make 10 free because they wanted to be nice. I could write at least ten paragraphs on that as well.
Right now, 7 should work just fine, but as more and more hardware and the software that uses the Internet changes, it'll require 10 unless you hack the crap out of 7. I know a guy that's a little bit of a conspiracy theorist who's still running 98se. LOL! You can't even take advantage of modern day website capability today in a browser built for 98se. He did indicate he was using some kind of proxy for
SNI for websites, but beyond that I don't know what else he's doing. Very strange person. I'd be more apt to use XP if that's what he's thinking.