BF2S Forums New to Updates and patches. Would appreciate some help!

Hello. I've been playing BF2 for a while now, but haven't really caught onto the whole patch thing. At my university I have a crappy connection as it is, but I can usually play some great games. The thing is, for about two months now, It has been saying I have an "older version than the server" and as of now I can only play on one or two servers on BF2 and one or two servers on BF2S and its getting worse. Half of them ones I CAN play on are in other countries and I lagg the entire time...so it actually isn't gaming at all, more like a slideshow if you know what I mean! So I figured that is what this patch business is all about. So right now i'm downloading the "BF2 1.4 Server patch". I don't know if I even need this thing, but I had to start somewhere. What is this difference between the "incremental patch", the "full version" and the "server patch". Do I need them all? I tried searching for some related topics, but I guess I wasn't scoring any keywords so I'm sorry if this has been posted to crap somewhere else, just post the topic link here if you think it would help. My last question...after downloading these patches, do I need to "activate" them or "unzip" or "open" them in any way? If so, how? Thank you so much guys! I'll hopefully see you all on the battlefield! -RogueIsTrav