I have earlier questioned Sitecores way of releasing new versions. You can read the full discussion here: http://sdn.sitecore.net/SDN5/Forum/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=17750. The whole notion of Sitecore having “recommended” and “not recommended” releases are to me rather strange. Especially considering the frequency of when new versions gets to the “recommended” level. For instance it is at the moment not possible to use a recommended version of Sitecore which supports Sitecore OMS!
In Pentia we finally got to that point, where we just decided to ignore the recommended label and upgrade and use the latest released version, as it seems rather arbitrary whether a version is recommended or not. This means that I wanted to download the latest version of Sitecore… But guess what. That is not possible. You have to download the release 090630; install it and then afterward download and install two updates.
So I couldn’t help but wonder… Why can’t I download a package containing the latest release of Sitecore?
Eldblom 
Hi Jens,
Just a small remark…
You only have to install one update on top of 6.1 release 090630 to get to the latest 6.1 release 090821. You don’t have to install the update inbetween, since all of Sitecore’s “small” updates are cumulative and contains all the changes of the previous “small” updates in the update package.
Also notice that since 6.1, the update packages contain a full copy of the clean web.config (and in this case also the FieldTypes.config and Commands.config). These files will be installed side-by-side to the original files. But it means that when you’re upgrading a solution that doesn’t have any changes to these files (maybe except from minor web.config changes), it’s often faster to simply replace the files with the new ones and then apply changes (like changing the DataFolder variable in the web.config) instead of manually applying changes to the config files. This trick also worked for 6.0.x, but there you had to download the files from the Sitecore Developer Network. But now the files are installed by the update package.
I agree that it would be easier for customers who simply want the latest & greates release if they could download the full distributive so they didn’t have to install an update immediately after installing the product.
Best Regards
Kim Hornung
Thanks Kim,
Does this mean you in the future also will be providing full distribution packages when there is a new update?
-thomas
You’re welcome..
No, for small updates like 6.1 Update-1 and 6.1 Update-2, we will continue to provide only an upgrade package, not the full distributive.
But that could change in the future – we are very much aware that the current way of doing it is incovenient when somebody simply wants the newest release.
/Kim
Hi Kim,
Don’t get me wrong. I think the update package and update wizard is great! It should ease the upgrade process a lot and is some really needed functionality. I only argue that it would be easier to set up a new solution, if I don’t have to upgrade it first. 🙂