There are many different versions of the UV-5. UV-5R, UV-5R+, & UV-5RA. Each version that comes out every few months has improved firmware that allows the radio to be more versatile. So to get the improvements, we need to buy the UV-5 of the month. Wouldn't it be nice if we could go to their site & download free firmware to accomplish the same thing without having to buy a new radio every few months? Also, this way when they improve the above mentioned problems, we could download those fixes in our radios. I have a friend who has every variant of this radio, as that's how he gets the best firmware. While these radios are cheap enough to do this, being able to download the fixes would be ideal.