Whether you realize it or not, every piece of hardware in your computer uses software called drivers to function correctly. Drivers are what make it possible to play games, print documents, surf the Internet and read this review. They are sort of the spine of your computer’s ability to function at all. Unfortunately, your drivers need to be updated on occasion, and in general most people have no idea when this needs to happen; they only figure it out when they go to use a particular application and get an error message telling them that they do not have the proper driver. One great way to get around this confusion is with a driver scanner, such as Uniblue’s DriverScanner 2009.
So how does it measure up? Well, downloading and setting up this software was just as easy as you’d wish for. It was quick and painless. Delving into the actual functionality of it, I found that DriverScanner 2009 was very easy to use. It has large easy to find and read buttons and tabs that make it very obvious when you have any questions as to what you need to do.
The first thing I did was a scan for all the drivers. DriverScanner 2009 found that I had 126 drivers on my system! Admittedly, I had no idea that I had that many. I knew there would be dozens, but nowhere near that number. The bad news, however, was that many of them were out of date—12 of them to be exact. Being your somewhat above-average PC user, I mostly rely on automated updates to take care of stuff like this, and look what happened.
Obviously, this needed to be remedied, so I manually clicked each one, one at a time, to manually install them. This does take some time, but it is definitely worth it. Despite what you may think by looking at other software, there isn’t a simple “Fix” button you can click to remedy everything when it comes to drivers.
DriverScanner 2009 finds the drivers you need for you (no small feat if you’ve ever tried to do it yourself), and lines them all up, with a “Download Now” button next to them. You go down the list and download and run each one, one at a time. Depending on the driver, you may need to restart your computer; so the whole process can take some time since you need to handle each driver individually.
DriverScanner 2009 also has a Backup feature on the dashboard, with an easy-to-find tab. This feature lets you backup all your drivers in an easily-found location (you can specify the folder you want them in to make it easier for you) should some catastrophe happen to your PC. This way, you can have all your drivers in one place and backed up.
Uniblue DriverScanner 2009 Summary
DriverScanner 2009 is going for $29.95 right now, which is a pretty good deal, considering what it does. If you already have all the security and virus protection you need, I’d say it’s time to go ahead and spring for this software. I’d definitely put security and virus protection ahead of updated drivers, but eventually you are going to need software such as this to keep your PC running smoothly.
It’s not like your computer is going to suddenly stop working because of outdated drivers, but it will run slower. Updated drivers, on the other hand, have all the kinks worked out and let your computer run faster and more efficiently. Uniblue DriverScanner 2009 is highly recommended, especially if your computer is a few years old and you’ve never updated your drivers.
