A device driver is a piece of software that enables your computer to communicate with external hardware, such as a printer. Think of device drivers as ‘bridges’ that translate the command you initiate on your PC into a format that the printer can understand to carry out a printing job.
To illustrate further… when you’re viewing a document in, say, MS Word and want to print it, you’ll invoke a menu in MS Word to start the printing job, right? After clicking “ok”, your computer then uses the printer driver to communicate with your printer. When you’re using your mouse, a mouse driver is used by your PC so that it can “tell” the mouse what you want to do.
Almost each and every hardware device connected to your PC needs its own device driver. That is, you can’t use your printer driver for your mouse and vice versa. (And your mouse can’t be told to print!). As such, it’s important that you have the most updated device drivers installed on your Pc. Otherwise, these devices may not function properly.
Why Are There Always Updates to Device Drivers?
There are several reasons why device manufacturers release new drivers; here’s some of them.
The device manufacturer has made small improvements on the driver that they’d like to share with you. Sometimes, even long after a manufacturer has released a new model, problems or errors arise as consumers use them. When feedback on these problems reach the manufacturers, it is of course their duty to fix them. So, for overall better device performance, error resolution, activation of new features, and others, you need to update drivers for your existing hardware.
You have made changes to your system (e.g., upgraded to a new OS) so your device drivers can no longer communicate properly between your computer and the related device. Changes on your computer can render current device drivers useless. For example, if you upgrade to Windows Vista, some hardware you have may not function anymore because the drivers you have do not include “communication” between your hardware and a Windows Vista-based PC.
Your device drivers are corrupt. Call it normal wear and tear. Sometimes, due to frequent use, drivers on your PC get corrupt. In this scenario, you don’t need a driver upgrade but you do need a device driver replacement!
Device drivers are small, yet very important components of your PC. Ensure that you always have updated ones all the time and you’ll experince a more optimized computer system.
