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When is the last time you updated your computer drivers?

Last month?  Last year?

Never?

If you are like most people, you fall into the last category.  If it aint’ broke, don’t fix it… right?

In case you don’t know what a “driver” is, a hardware driver a small program that sits between your operating system (e.g. Windows XP or Windows Vista) and a specific piece of hardware (e.g. printer, monitor, sound card, hard drive).

A driver interprets hardware signals and converts them into bits of information that your operating system can use, and vice versa.  That is why each piece of hardware you purchase usually has a “driver” disc that you need to install to make the hardware work properly (like that printer you purchased a while back).

Since the driver interprets between the hardware and the operating system, you are likely to have some drivers that will work for Vista, but not XP… or XP, but not Vista.  Which is why that printer probably came with several discs – one for XP, one for Mac… and maybe even one for Vista (if you purchased it within the last couple of years).

Now that we have that out of the way, you can see that drivers play a vital role in whatever computer you are using right now.  If it’s weren’t for these drivers, you wouldn’t be able to see the screen you are currently looking at, or even use the mouse or keyboard to scroll down this page.

Some of the most basic drivers are built into the operating system, so they are installed automatically… but, they are still there.

What does this have to do with you?

Drivers are often taken for granted and forgotten.  Once you install the driver and the hardware works properly, people usually don’t think much about drivers.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret, however.  It’s something that only computer enthusists and gamers know about:

Updating your drivers will often give you a dramatic boost in your computer’s performance.  Often it’s very noticable.

If that weren’t enough, updating your hardware drivers will often remedy a lot of problems too.  Newer, better drivers can help stabilize a flakey computer system when nothing else will.

You see, programs and drivers are written by people.  People, of course, are not perfect.  Therefore, the programs and drivers people write are NOT perfect.  They can slow down a computer if not written well… and cause absolute havoc when written horribly.

But, just like your golf swing and your sudoku skills, these programs can be improved upon.  So, a driver that was installed last year may have had 5 ot 6 complete rewrites since you installed it.  The newer drivers are not installed automatically… not even during a Windows update.

They are not doing you any good sitting out there on the hardware manufacturer’s website.  But, how do you get them installed without having advanced technical skills?

In the past, there weren’t too many choices.  But, here in our Fort Collins computer repair shop, we’ve discovered a program that we have really grown to love.  It’s called RadarSync, available at www.radarsync.com.

Downloading the program is completely painless, installing it is easy… and running the application is a piece of cake.

The program gives you the option to backup your drivers (useful if you are formatting your hard drive and reloading the operating system), or updating the drivers which is the subject of this posting.

Although there are other driver update utilities available on the web (Driver Genius Pro, Carambis Driver Updater), one of the coolest things about RadarSync is that it also checks for outdated programs, too!

For example, my first run of RadarSync on my machine revealed the I had an outdated version of my Mobile Intel 965 Chipset Driver.  But, in addition to that, RadarSync informed me that there was a newer version of 7-Zip available, and a newer version of VLC ready to be downloaded and installed.

It also let me know which of my computer’s applications were okay and needed no updating.

My only gripe about RadarSync 2009 is that you can’t maximize (or even increase the size of) the main window.  Hopefully, they will resolve this small annoyance in the next release of the software, making this application near perfect.

All in all, RadarSync is a great addition to update your outdated drivers and update  your software.  This alone will do a lot to speed up your system, make your system more stable and less prone to crashes.

Download RadarSync from www.radarsync.com.