Driver Magician

One unfortunate fact about any Windows system is that it starts to go out of date as soon as you install it. Microsoft?s Windows Update service keeps your Microsoft software current, but how do you keep up to date with the latest and (sometimes) greatest versions of the driver software used by your motherboard, graphics card, sound hardware, camera, network adapter, mouse, scanner, USB ports, and all the other hardware on your machine? If your answer is either (1) ?I never bother with driver updates, no matter how many problems I could doing eliminate if I did,? or (2) ?I waste hours visiting a dozen hardware vendors? websites, hunting for updates,? or anything in between, then Driver Magician is for you.

Driver Magician is a combination of a utility program and a Web service that compares the hardware drivers on your system with a frequently-updated list of the latest versions. The freely downloadable utility tells you which of your drivers are out of date. If you pay the $29.95 license fee, the program can download the latest versions for you from the vendors? websites, so that you can install them by running the downloaded installers, just as if you had searched for the installer yourself and downloaded them individually. SlimCleaner DriverUpdate functions much the same as Driver Magician, but the paid version (which costs 2 cents more than the paid version of Driver Magician) features one click installs.

If you prefer not to pay for the downloading service, you can of course hunt down the latest versions on your own ? though that?s sometimes a frustrating and confusing process. (If you?ve ever tried to find driver software on Intel?s site, you?ll know exactly what I mean.) The paid version saves you the trouble of searching, and adds safety and convenience features that I haven?t seen anywhere else. For example, it can back up all your driver software into a single executable program so that you ever need to reinstall Windows on your current hardware, you can run the executable program created by Driver Magician and, in a single step, restore all your third-party drivers in a single operation. If you?ve ever been through the tedium of re-installing drivers for a well-stocked computer, you?ll find this feature is worth far more than the price of a license.

The Driver Magician app can also back up one or more of your drivers into a folder or ZIP file so you can restore them easily if an upgrade turns out to cause problems ?Windows 7?has a rollback-driver feature, but it?s well-hidden by comparison with Driver Magician?s. And there?s another feature that you?ll want to use if you ever reinstall Windows, or if you want to transfer your Windows system to another computer?a set of options that extends Driver Magician?s backup feature to include the contents of your ?My Documents? and ?Desktop? folders, and also your Internet Explorer favorites and the complete Windows Registry. Experts will know how to perform all these backups by hand, but it?s convenient to have a program that can perform them all in one step. (But if your system has problems and you need to reinstall Windows, you probably don?t want to restore the Registry from your older system, because it may bring your old problems to the new system.)

Because Driver Magician doesn?t try to update your Windows system itself, it doesn?t compete with ReImage, a combination of a desktop utility and a Web service that can update or restore files that are part of Windows itself. Unlike ReImage?($69.95, 3 Stars)?Driver Magician doesn?t install its downloads for you. You have to find them in your Downloads folder and run the installers individually. But it?s a lot better than hunting them down on your own. Keep in mind that Driver Magician doesn?t compete with CNET?s TechTracker software, which is designed to alert you to update to your applications, not your drivers.

Before you decide you need Driver Magician, keep in mind that your system might continue to work perfectly well with your existing drivers. But I think it?s worth your time and trouble to download the free Driver Magician utility and run it to see just how many of your drivers are out-of-date. The result may surprise you?as I was surprised to find a half-dozen out-of-date drivers on a system that I thought I had kept carefully updated. And if you update the drivers on your system, it just might reward you with smoother performance.

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