If you do own a laptop or a desktop computer, at some point of time or the other, you will have to install or reinstall your drivers. Perhaps this is the first time when you come across these programs that will continue to play an important part in the smooth functioning of your computer.

Very simply, a driver works as a ‘translator’ between a hardware device and the applications that are considered higher level computer programs or the operating system that is intends to use the program for a particular function. Now each hardware device requires their own specialized set of commands in order to function properly, and thus require their own device drivers.

Device drivers are normally used for hardware such as scanners, printers, digital cameras, sound cards, network cards, graphics cards and computer storage devices such as floppy, CD-ROM and hard disks.

Most experts recommend that it is a good idea to update your drivers that will help improve the performance of the device being used, as the code used to write the driver is continuously being fine-tuned for improvements. So, if you want your computer and the hardware being used to work at an optimum level and especially being free from bugs, it is important to constantly update your drivers.

Some of these drivers, when installed, are set to be updated automatically whereas some drivers require the computer user to manually download the latest version of the device driver from the manufacturer’s website. Another method is by going to Device Manager in Windows (Right click on ‘My Computer’) and updating each driver from there as well.