A Question About Which Version of Java Should be Installed?

I have a total of 70 workstations that I have to make sure stay updated where I work. I noticed that when I go to the java website that the latest download is version 7 update 4, but when I log into one of the 70 workstations and click the java console and click update it says that the workstation already has the latest version, but it doesn't it has Java version 6 update 31. We use a third party software to keep software up to date but it doesnt seem to be detecting that java needs to be updated. All but a few workstations use Windows XP SP3. Is java 7 update 4 considered the latest version? Am I gonna have to manually uninstall the old java and install the latest version on each PC?

Whether you need to uninstall Java 6 and install Java 7 is up to you. It wouldn't surprise me if versioning systems see Java 6 and Java 7 as separate installations (so you have the latest version of Java 6, but not the latest version of Java 7).

Java 6 is going EOL in the near-ish future, so it's probably not a bad idea to update to Java 7. But it really depends on your needs.

I agree with Kevin - the major JVM versions are seen as separate releases, not versions of the same code. If you don't need java 7 right now, I'd save the update for later when you do (it'll save a lot of patching in the mean time).