Question about BIOS flashing...

I just flashed the BIOS of my new Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop to A02. It came with A01 from factory. I was very hesitant before doing so due to the horror stories I read online where people flashed their BIOS and all they saw was a black screen after the flashing. When my laptop was flashing its BIOS, the fan noise was relatively higher and it took only 10 seconds or so. And computer functions normal so far, but during the process I was having a heart attack, fearing something might go wrong. A few years ago I tried to flash a Compaq Presario with th software I downloaded from their website and computer just died during flashing process. It completed the flashing process alright but never came back on. My question is 1) Why did the fan speed go higher? 2) How often do BIOS updates get released?

I am in Korea right now and if it messes up, I know I will have heck of a hard time to have it fixed... It feels like I got lucky this time and it worked, but don't know about next time, can I trust Dell BIOS updates?

Thanks...