How to resolve corrupt downloaded updates

Question

Being new to the Apple MacBook Pro product I'm hoping someone could assist in advising on the following problem I'm experiencing. I purchased the item two days ago and after setting up the basics fro the first time of switching on the machine, I found that there were 12 software updates needing to be done. I duly accepted all 12 updates and the download process of 1.28GB started. At the end of the download the machine needs to be restarted in order to install the updates which I accept.
After the first few seconds of carrying out the installation of the updates an error occurs informing me the updates could not be applied/installed due to a corrupt file and that the next time updates are run and installed it will try again. Needless to say I tried again and again downloaded the 1.28GB of updates, which includes the OS update from 10.6.7 to 10.6.8. Again the same thing happened where an error was returned stating that the download file was corrupt. Being in South Africa and not having the online support available from Apple as it is in most other countries I contacted the approved Apple importer and supplier locally and was informed that I need to run the updates individually.
Again I tried downloading the updates individually starting with the OS update which also downloaded fine but when it came to installing the update it again returned the same error of being corrupt and not able to install. Thereafter I tried updating iTunes and again with the download completed it also returns the same error when trying to install the update - file corrupt cannot install.
Any advice or assistance out there besides throwing the machine against the wall?

Answer 1

A combo updater is different from a version update - the combo updater contains all the patches of all the previous updates of the major version. 10.6.8v1.1 combo updater will update any version from 10.6.0 through 10.6.7 - which you would use if having to reinstall from DVD.
Corruption is a possibilty in any network connection when pushed to the edge of its achievable speed. If can happen over wifi or wired connections. It does not result from packet loss, because packets are guaranteed by the network stack. Corruption of data within a packet can occur. Thats where the checksums SHA1 and md5 can be used to guarantee with a very high probabilty that a file is intact.
So certainly the fix for corruption involves getting a more reliable network connection - in general wired is better than wireless and strong signal is better and slower is better than faster.
For those without options to connect to a more reiable network, repeated attempts at download will usually result in a good copy eventually.