If you use the Cakewalk Command Center to perform installations and updates, if any given monthly update release causes you issues, you can VERY quickly and easily use the Roll Back feature of the Cakewalk Command Center to move back to some earlier version, so you are never locked into a given update cycle if it somehow caused you issues.  Since I had already manually done all of my installs prior to when Command Center was introduced, I did incur a giant one-time 'hit' from doing all the installs of everything all over again to run them through Command Center, and have since used Command Center for all additional installs - for me this was WAY worth it.
 
I DO encourage you to keep Windows Update maintenance up to current levels, as well.
 
Bob Bone
 

Thanks for all of the helpful input, guys!

I imagine something along these lines was mentioned earlier in this thread, or frequently in other threads, but here goes anyways - I had FOUR separate therapists come visit me today and I am just too tired to scroll up:
 
So, PRIOR to the monthly roll outs of updates with Platinum, such as X2 or X3 as examples, they would be released and have some combination of new features, possibly new content, possibly new plugins (theirs or 3rd-party), some fixes to existing bugs, and some number of new bugs.  That's the reality of software releases.  This is also true with Platinum, but there is a HUGE difference with Platinum.
 
With X2 or X3, they may have released a hot fix quickly after the release, to address some show-stopper issues that affected a BUNCH of users, which was cool, but then you would wait for several MONTHS to go by before a maintenance release was put out for the users.  There would be several of these over the course of the first maybe 6-9 months of the year, but then they would be working diligently on the new FULL release, which would be an upgrade, not a maintenance release.  SOOOO, whatever bugs were there might take MONTHS to get addressed, as well as getting any sort of new functionality or content.
 
With PLATINUM's rolling updates coming every month, the Cakewalk developers would be dealing with SUBSTANTIALLY smaller numbers of fixes and features for any given month, AND could defer releasing some set of fixes and features until they felt they were actually ready for release, rather than cramming as many as 500 fixes as well as new development into a giant X2 or X3 update.  SOOOOO, the benefits are: MUCH quicker delivery of new functionality and while in any given month the number of fixes or features would be smaller than one of those X2/X3 semi-annual updates, the updates and features released in any of the monthly Platinum update releases were WAY more stable and you would get access to new stuff and fixed stuff WAY quicker.
 
YES, it is true that some bugs have been out there for a long long time, and that will continue to be the case, as they triage things that need to be done, things they would LIKE to get done, and have to come up with some idea of what CAN be done, given all the usual battles/balances that software developers have to make every day they exist.
 
For ME, I cannot even recall the last time Platinum crashed on me - where it was actually a PLATINUM crash, versus some 3rd-party plugin failure, such as with a couple of Arturia's VST 3 versions of synths (when their VST 2 versions worked great as a painless workaround).
 
When folks use the Cakewalk Command Center to manage installs, once they bite the big one on getting everything reinstalled under the CCC (which DOES take hours to do), from that point on, should there ever BE an occasion where one of the monthly updates to Sonar or one of the other components under the CCC control fails, it TRULY is painless to use the CCC to do a roll back to the prior version, or however far back you want to go.
 
I REALLY like this new approach, and I would HIGHLY recommend folks move up to Platinum from whatever prior version of Sonar that they are on.
 
ALSO - you have NO requirement to UNINSTALL your PRIOR X3 or X2 or whatever version you have, when you move to Platinum.  BOTH versions will live happily next to each other and in fact, I still maintain on two of my four computers, X1, X2, X3, and Platinum.  With ZERO issues from doing that.  MY reasons are that I like to use the same version of Sonar I start a project with from beginning to the end of the project.  Some of those projects will never be finished, and in fact Sonar does a good job of maintaining backward compatibility so that I should be able to open any of those projects up in Platinum, but this was just a choice I made for myself, and it always works, unless some Windows maintenance has rendered either a given version of Sonar inoperable, or one or more of the plugins quits working for some reason.  That does not happen too often.
 
SOOOOOO - since you can KEEP your X3 alongside Platinum, why not go ahead and DO IT!!!!! :) :) :)
 
Bob Bone