Eclipse: Installing updates

[Dan Thurman]

I noticed that as a normal user, installing eclipse updates may require write 
permissions to root filesystem areas (/usr) and will fail.

How do you get around this as a normal user?  Is there a way to allow the 
normal user temporary root permissions so as to complete the updates?

If I were to log in as a root user, the updates would be installed but also in 
the root user's home directory which is not what I want.

Thanks!
Dan