my laptop keeps saying i should update to internet explorer 8, should i?

are there any benifits to staying with 7 ?

Do the following if you want rid of messages.

1) Start
2) Settings
3) Control panel
4) Windows security
5) Select Automatic updates to OFF

If aint broke don't try and fix it.

certain websites dont like IE8 and are not compatible, eg yahoo games.

Firefox is a much easier browser to use and is in my opinion more secure.

I use Google chrome seems faster than IE8 and Firefox

Updated, didn't like it, switched to Google Chrome, much quicker browser.

That will be because of the rendering engine in IE7, they had to write workarounds for IE so that the site looked the same in all browsers.

As IE8 has now caught up they will have to re-write some of their page for it to display OK in IE8