I am new member owner to the Phantom 3 community. I purchased a Phantom 3 advanced and so far have had good luck and alot of fun. The flight log indicates I have 3 hours in the air. A steep lerning curve for this old guy so far.

I have no undertanding of the how to do all the firmware updates....AC,RC battery,IOS App. I have read about the the zip file, remove the sd card , bn fies etc but it I cannot even find the downloaded zip file on my computer. The point is I am not computer literate to this extent therfore I will not be doing any updates. As stated I have had success with flying the P3A and would like to know how important are the updates?

I can see that I have ver. 1.4XX on the AC but no idea about the rest of the ver. I wish there was a way to simply install the sd card to the computer and hit a button.

There are some issues with recent updates and you might be wise to keep your current firmware for now since your P3 is doing fine. If you are using IOS to run the DJI flight app you can update that separately on your device phone or tablet.

Welcome to the Phantom club, you have an amazing piece of technology there and everything has to be done correctly to give you the best enjoyment.
If you know you are on 1.4, then you should know what the other versions are.
In the main page (where you fly from, the top right tab opens of the setting menu. From there go to the bottom tab with the 3 dots, then scroll to the bottom and the about will tell you the versions everything is on.
Also, please watch al the videos in the tutorial section and a video on how to update the firmware and there's also a simulator and the manual.

To view those its in the page when you first power up the app (aircraft does not have to be on, only on for the simulator to work)
The upper right icon (graduation hat) will take you into all the videos, manual, and info.

As far as updating, it's very easy if you just follow the instructions. It does take 20-30 minutes, so do not try to start it again. When an update is finished the camera gimbal light will be solid green and you'll hear 4 beeps DDD,DDDD,DDDD. after that you can power off the aircraft.
Also watch this video, it will help you get better range and more solid signal