Not all patches are bad, some work quite well and are very system friendly. AmigaMance's point was to highlight the good ones. He also warned people away from the bad ones, primarily by omission. This isn't a simplistic clash of ideologies here("official" vs. "hack"). By all means, upgrade your hardware as much as possible and use the best (not necessarily the "latest") drivers. But also take advantage of some really great ingenius little programs (or "hacks", if you prefer) that people have written specifically to overcome many of the shortcomings in the products that have the blessings of officialdom.