Christmas is now officially over – whew! The decorations have been taken down (Unless you live at my house in which case I’m doing good to have them down by Easter). The wrapping paper has been thrown away. The kids’ toys are already broken or in the process of getting broken (My kids set a new record this year and actually broke one while removing it from the packaging!) Now, with the New Year approaching I’m sure everyone is trying to figure out what kind of resolutions to make. How about this one, I resolve faithfully to update my drivers. No, I’m not talking about finding someone new to root for at the local NASCAR track. I’m talking about computer drivers.
What is a driver?
First, for those of you who don’t know what a driver is, let me explain. A driver is a computer program that controls another device. Everything from your keyboard to your video card has a corresponding driver. The driver acts like a translator between the device and programs that use the device. Without drivers, nothing would work. So, as you can see, drivers are pretty important little programs and more importantly they need to be maintained or updated on a regular basis. Failure to update your drivers can cause your devices and the software that uses them to behave strangely, work poorly, or simply stop working all together.
Why do drivers need to be updated?
So, why do drivers need to be updated anyway? Drivers need to be updated for three reasons. What’s the first reason? Hmmm, let me see if I can relate this to a common occurrence in the computer world. Do you know how Microsoft always puts out software that contains a lot of bugs? Often, even before the initial product hits the shelves, updates are available online to fix bugs that are in the software. Well, the same holds true for almost every device on or connected to your computer. A lot of driver updates simply fix issues that have been discovered since the product’s initial release. For instance, I’m typing this article on an IBM ThinkPad. The latest updated driver for this computer’s video card is version 2.15.00T that was released 9/6/2000. This update, according to the IBM web site fixes the following symptoms (a.k.a. bugs).
Symptoms corrected by version 2.15.00T:
- (Fix) (Windows 95/98 Japanese)
- The color of some charts on Compression tab in the hard disk drive properties is not correct.
For a complete look at the update history of this driver since its initial release click here.
Not all driver updates are a result of bugs that have been discovered. When a manufacturer releases a product, they cannot possibly make it compatible with every new product that comes on the market. Manufacturers fix this problem by releasing updated drivers, which make their old products compatible with new ones. Finally, sometimes your driver files simply get corrupted or deleted through regular use. Regularly updating your drivers can help boost performance and avoid program and system crashes.
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