Your supposed to do it every time you patch the kernel..
Yeah--I try not to d othat very often as I use this machine for work. Once it's running smooth, I try to to patch the kernel if I can help it.
I will patch it once the updates hit a major version number, but for all these minor updates, I skip them.
I'm currently running 2.6.17-1_2145, while the "current" one is 2.6.17-1_2174. I'll wait until 2.6.18 comes out.