Briefly, in accordance with one embodiment of the invention, an adaptive equalizer comprises: a digital filter including filter tap coefficients; a slicer; and a filter tap coefficient update block. The filter, slicer and coefficient update block are configured so as to perform at least one burst update of the filter tap coefficients. In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a method of updating the filter tap coefficients of an adaptive equalizer comprises the step of: performing at least one burst update of the filter tap coefficients.