“Update your drivers safely and easily”
You probably have heard thousands of times the drivers while referring to computer staff. Actually, they are crucial programs for communication between the software and the hardware of your computer. For example your printer, your scanner, your graphic cards are all powered by a driver. Usually, when there is some communication problems between them and your software, in most of the cases faulty or out of date drivers are to blame.
You will find hundreds of websites on the Internet offering you programs which scan your computer system to inform you about drivers you need to get things running properly. These are mostly tailored to the exact specifications of your system and thus, unfortunately, many of these programs just don’t work at all!
What is more, some of these programs get you the drivers that are either outdated or not compatible with your system. The poor result that you achieve is clogging-up of your computer!
That is why our team of reviewers decided to put the most popular 20 driver updating programs to the test and find out once and for all which program was best.
We used the following criteria:
- System Compatibility – Does the product work equally well with all versions of Windows 98, XP and Vista?
- Hardware Compatibility – Is it able to get the official drivers recommended by manufacturer for all of types and models of printers, monitors, video/graphics cards, sound cards, speakers, webcams, and Ethernet cards?
- Updates – Does it work with newly released 2009 models? Is the software constantly updated to find the newest drivers for older equipment?
- User-Friendliness: How quickly and accurately does the software scan to get the drivers you need?
- Customer Support – Do they offer 24/7 customer support?
After extensive testing on all different types of computers and operating systems, our team found only 3 that met our expectations and complied with the above specifications. You will not be disappointed using these programs if you want to update your drivers:
Our Top Choice — DriverCure
Our testing has shown that Driver Cure is the number 1. To our great surprise, it was the only product to find and update 100% of our test drivers and work on all versions of Windows including Vista.
Unlike other software, Driver Cure not only updates new drivers, but also finds and deletes old unused drivers. This can free up memory speeding up your computer. (With some computers we saw CPU speed increases of up to 24%.)
Another great feature of Driver Cure is that you can instantly plug in any hardware (monitors, printers, graphics cards, ect..) and run Driver Detective and within minutes start using that hardware. You never have to worry about losing a driver CD or searching complex driver directories again.
Updates your drivers and software; saves hours of searching; monitors more than 4,000 software applications and 3,000 hardware vendors for updates; can email you when an update is available; backs up your drivers and creates system restore points before installing updates.
No support for Windows 2000, ME or 98.
Biggest driver database — Driver Detective
Driver Detective’s strength lies in the size of its driver database. And at 11 million and growing by the day, it’s huge. It’s probably safe to say that if Driver Detective can’t update your drivers, nothing can.
It includes a backup wizard so you can backup your downloaded drivers to a CD-ROM or external drive for safe keeping. And if you’re considering upgrading to Windows Vista, you’ll love the Vista Upgrade wizard. It’ll tell you whether your computer meets Vista’s minimum hardware requirements.
It also has integrated customer support. Just click on a question mark icon next to a driver listing and a window pops up so you can ask the Drivers HeadQuarters support staff a question.
11,000,000 device driver database; driver backup wizard; Vista Upgrade wizard; integrated customer support tools; creates system restore points.
No support for Windows ME or 98.
Best for backing up drivers — Driver Genius
Driver Genius has a database of more than 30,000 drivers and includes a couple of really useful features.
The Device Diagnostics tool can help you quickly find out why a device isn’t working properly and offer a solution to fix it.
And the backup tool makes it simple to backup your drivers. You can even create an executable file to automatically install all your drivers at once. This will be a real time saver if you ever re-install Windows because you won’t have to search for numerous installation disks.
30,000+ driver database; Device Diagnostic tool quickly finds problems; driver backup and restore tool; creates system restore points.
Downloading drivers can be a little slow.
Supported device types
Desktop computers, laptops & notebooks, printers, scanners, monitors, keyboards, mice, display adapters, hard disk controllers, DVD & CD-ROM drives, digital cameras, sound cards, graphics cards, USB, Bluetooth, BIOS & motherboards, modems, and many more…
